Monadic Interaction∗

Stephen Puryear
North Carolina State University

Leibniz has almost universally been represented as denying that created mon-
ads, including human minds and the souls of animals, can causally interact
either with one another or with bodies.1 Yet his writings contain many state-
ments which appear to contradict this reading. For example, he maintains in
numerous passages that created monads can be said to interact or to cause
changes in one another in the special sense of what he calls ‘ideal’ interaction.
Thus he writes to Des Bosses that ‘The modifications of one monad are the
ideal causes of the modifications of other monads’ (G 2:475/L 608).2 And in
the Monadology he discusses a kind of action which ‘in simple substances is
only an ideal influence of one monad on the other’ (M 51). Given that such
claims appear in the same writings and in writings from the same period in
which Leibniz supposedly denies that created monads interact, a puzzle arises
concerning how to square these claims with the traditional reading.
Proponents of the traditional reading rarely address this puzzle, but those
who do have usually proposed to solve it by denying that what Leibniz calls
ideal action is a genuine form of action or causation. As R. C. Sleigh (1990b,
∗ Author Posting. (c) BSHP, 2010. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here

by permission of BSHP for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was
published in British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 18 Issue 5, December 2010.
doi:10.1080/09608788.2010.524756 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2010.524756)
1 See, for example, Broad 1975, 45; Loeb 1981, 269; Mates 1986, 39, 206, 208; Garber & Wilson

1998, 846; Bennett 2001, 240; Jolley 2006, 95, 116–17. To my knowledge, the only scholar who has
challenged this tradition up till now is Hidé Ishiguro. For her take, which I consider problematic,
see the articles cited in Woolhouse 1985 as well as Woolhouse’s own discussion.
2 Leibniz’s works will be cited using the following abbreviations. A: Sämtliche Schriften und

Briefe, edited by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (Darmstadt und Berlin: Akademie-
Verlag, 1923–), cited by series, volume, and page number; AG: G.W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays,
edited by R. Ariew and D. Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989); C: Opuscules et fragments inédits
de Leibniz, edited by L. Couturat (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1903); DM: Discourse on Metaphysics, cited by
section number; G: Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by C. I. Ger-
hardt (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1875–90), cited by volume and page number; GM:
Leibnizens Mathematische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin: A. Asher, 1849–63), cited by
volume and page number; H: Theodicy, edited by E. M. Huggard (Chicago: Open Court, 1985);
L: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2nd edition, edited by Leroy Loemker
(Boston: Kluwer, 1989); LC: The Labyrinth of the Continuum, edited by R. A. T. Arthur (New Haven:
Yale, 2001); M: Monadology, cited by section number; MP: Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, edited by
G. H. R. Parkinson (London: J.M. Dent, 1973); NE: New Essays on Human Understanding, cited by
page number from A 6.6; PNG: Principles of Nature and of Grace, cited by section number; T: Essays
of Theodicy, cited by section number; WF: Leibniz’s “New System” and Associated Contemporary Texts,
edited by R. S. Woolhouse and R. Francks (New York: Oxford, 1997).

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162) explains, ‘Much to Leibniz’s credit (in my opinion), when he perceived

his philosophical theses to be at odds with common sense and received opin-
ion, he engaged in an effort to “save the appearances”, i.e., to explain how the
(mistaken) common sense view related to the underlying metaphysical reality
posited by the theory’. In the case of monadic interaction, Sleigh continues,
the result of this effort was the theory of ideal action, which is ‘an account of
merely apparent causation’ that specifies ‘what conditions obtain at the level
of ultimate metaphysical reality when causal statements are employed’ (1990b,
161, 163).3 In other words, ideal action is not genuine but merely apparent cau-
sation. Thus, when Leibniz claims that monads interact ideally, what he means
is just that they appear to interact, and since things can certainly appear to in-
teract even if they don’t, such claims in no way conflict with the traditional
reading.
As popular and attractive as this traditional perspective may be, I believe
that it actually distorts Leibniz’s thought and that a closer look at the relevant
texts points in the direction of a rather different approach to monadic interac-
tion. In what follows, I want to argue that Leibniz does not view ideal action
as merely apparent interaction but as a non-standard though nonetheless quite
genuine form of causal influence. In other words, I shall contend that when
Leibniz claims that monads interact ideally, he should be understood to be
claiming that they truly do interact, at least in a sense. Further, I shall argue
that when Leibniz denies that created monads interact, what he denies, prop-
erly speaking, is not that monads interact tout court, as the traditional reading
has it, but only that they interact in the usual sense, what Leibniz calls ‘real’
or ‘physical’ interaction. Though the contemporary reader may be tempted to
suppose that when Leibniz speaks of real influence or real causation, “real”
means something like true or genuine, I aim to show that this is not the case,
and that his distinction between real and ideal action is not a distinction be-
tween genuine and merely apparent action, but rather a distinction within the
category of genuine action.
From my point of view the purpose of the theory of ideal action is not,
as Sleigh suggests, merely to account for appearances, though in a sense (to
be specified in §3 below) it does that too. Its purpose is first and foremost
to establish a sense in which certain of our ‘ordinary’ judgements come out
true: namely, those to the effect that minds interact with one another and with
bodies.4 As I see it, then, in claiming that monads interact with other things
ideally, Leibniz is promoting an approach to monadic interaction which is more
moderate (and hence more palatable) than the one he has traditionally been
portrayed as taking. Far from making the ‘strange and extravagant’ (Jolley
2006, 95) move of simply denying that created minds interact with other things,
he actually believes that such interaction does occur, just not in the way we
always thought. Thus, for Leibniz, the theory of ideal action plays the critical
3 See
also Mates 1986, 206 (cf. 40, 208) and Wilson 1992, 345; cf. Rescher 1991, 179.
4 Cf.
Leibniz to Huygens, 4/14 September 1694: ‘I attempt as much as possible to accommodate
common usage, salva veritate’ (AG 308/GM 2:199).

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

role of making it possible for him to achieve something of a rapprochement

with our ordinary conception of the world in the face of his denial of all real or
physical interaction involving created substances.
My aim in what follows will be to make a case for my alternative to the
traditional reading. Before that can be done, however, it will be necessary to
have before us at least a rough outline of Leibniz’s theory of ideal action. Since
that theory has tended to receive short shrift in the literature, I devote the first
section of the paper to the task of sketching such an outline. In the second sec-
tion, I then contrast ideal with real or physical interaction, identifying three key
points on which they differ. Drawing on the results of these first two sections,
I next present four lines of evidence for thinking that Leibniz considers ideal
action to be a kind of genuine and not merely apparent action. In the fourth
section, I defend my position against what I take to be the most promising ob-
jection which could be raised against it, what I call the two-approach objection. In
the process, I consider a representative selection of passages which have been
(or might be) given in support of the traditional view, and I argue that they
can reasonably be interpreted in a way which is consistent with my alterna-
tive reading. Having thus completed my case against the traditional reading
and in favor of my alternative, in the fifth and final section I explore a compli-
cation which threatens to undercut the ability of the theory of ideal action to
accomplish what Leibniz claims for it. I conclude that though he consistently
represents himself as holding that in a sense created monads truly do interact,
serious doubts may be raised about whether he is entitled to such a position
given his commitment to a certain picture of the process of divine creation.

1 The Theory of Ideal Action

I should register up front that on my view Leibniz’s theory of ideal action
appears fully-formed in the mid-1680s, coincident with the emergence of his
mature philosophy, and persists essentially unchanged for the rest of his life.
For this reason, in the following exposition I will draw freely on texts dating
from throughout this roughly thirty-year period, with little regard to exactly
when they were written. I will also bracket questions about whether Leibniz
changed his views concerning the foundations of his ontology during this pe-
riod. Some commentators, most notably Daniel Garber, have suggested that
during his ‘middle years’ (roughly, the 1680s and 90s) Leibniz admits the ex-
istence of quasi-Aristotelian corporeal substances—composites of substantial
form and primary matter—and that only in Leibniz’s later years does this view
give way to the more familiar ontology of the Monadology according to which
the only substances are unextended, immaterial simples analogous to the sub-
stantial forms of the earlier phase.5 Others, though not entirely in agreement
5 For the classic statement and defense of this view, see Garber 1985. In recent years Garber’s

position has evolved. For an account of the subsequent changes in his thought, see Garber 2004.

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

with one another, have opposed various aspects of this reading.6 For our pur-
poses, such disputes can safely be ignored. Whatever view we might take on
these issues, the fact remains that throughout both the middle and later years
Leibniz consistently holds that created substances—whether these be under-
stood as composites of form and matter or as immaterial simples—interact by
way of an ideal rather than a real or physical influence. My goal is simply to
understand the nature of this ideal influence, and for this we need assume little
more about these created substances than that they perceive, and perceive with
varying degrees of distinctness. In particular, we need not concern ourselves
with whether Leibniz understands them as immaterial monads, composites of
matter and form, or still something else.7

1.1 Distinctness and Activity

I begin my account with the most familiar component of Leibniz’s proposal:
his association of activity with distinct representation or perception. Before
turning to the texts, I should clarify how Leibniz uses, and therefore how I will
be using, the terms “represents”, “expresses”, “perceives”, and their cognates.
Two points are salient. First, Leibniz regularly uses “representation” (“rep-
resents”) and “expression” (“expresses”) interchangeably; roughly speaking,
both refer to one thing bearing a certain relation of order or correspondence
to another.8 Second, the term “perception” (“perceiving”) has a narrower ap-
plication: it refers specifically to representation (representing) that occurs in a
monad or simple substance. So every perception is a representation, though
not all representations are perceptions, since on Leibniz’s view such things as
bodies and mathematical objects can also represent.9
What, then, is the relation between distinctness and activity, as conceived
by Leibniz? On some occasions he characterizes it as one of correlation, as here
in the Monadology:
The creature is said to act externally insofar as it has perfection,
and to be acted upon by another, insofar as it is imperfect. Thus we
attribute action to the monad insofar as it has distinct perceptions,
and passion insofar as it has confused perceptions. (M 49)10
The underlying principle enunciated here is that activity correlates with per-
fection, and passivity with imperfection. But as Leibniz explicitly indicates
elsewhere (and implies here), a monad’s perfection consists in its distinct per-
6 See, e.g., Sleigh 1990a; Adams 1994; Rutherford 1995. For a subtle discussion of the attitudes

of these authors toward the ontology of Leibniz’s middle years, see Lodge 2005, §5.1.
7 I will also ignore questions about possible antecedents of the theory of ideal action in other

thinkers, except to note that Leibniz appears to have gotten the basic idea from Spinoza. (Cf.
Spinoza’s discussion of activity at E3p1). For more on the connection with Spinoza, see Kneale
1972.
8 See G 2:112/L 339; G 1:383–84/WF 53; NE 131, 133; T 357; C 15/MP 176–77.
9 See, e.g., G 7:263–64/L 207.
10 See also G 7:322/L 365; G 3:465/WF 177; G 3:347/WF 224–25; T 289.

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ception, and its imperfection in its confused perception.11 It follows that the
degree to which a monad acts increases as its perception becomes more dis-
tinct, and decreases as it becomes more confused.
In other texts Leibniz goes farther, maintaining that the activity (passivity)
of a monad not only correlates with but even consists in its distinct (confused)
perceptions:
[C]onfused thoughts are a mark of our imperfection, passions, and
dependence on the assemblage of exterior things or on matter, whereas
the perfection, force, control, liberty, and action of the soul consist
principally in our distinct thoughts. (G 4:574/WF 140)
[T]here is in the soul not only an order of distinct perceptions, form-
ing its dominion, but also a series of confused perceptions or pas-
sions, forming its bondage . . . . (T 64)12
This allows us to see why the extent to which a monad acts corresponds to
the degree to which its perceptions are distinct: because on Leibniz’s view its
acting (considered in the monad itself13 ) is nothing other than its having such
perceptions.
In order to understand this suggestion better, it would help to know what
these distinct perceptions which constitute the activity of a substance take as
their objects. In other words, what precisely are they perceptions of? Leibniz
answers this question in a comment that he included in 1686 letters to both
Arnauld and Foucher:
[E]ach individual substance or complete being is like a world apart,
independent of everything other than God. . . . But this indepen-
dence does not prevent the intercourse of substances with one other,
for as all created substances are a continual production of the same
sovereign being according to the same designs, and expressing the
same universe or the same phenomena, they correspond exactly
with each other. And this makes us say that the one acts on the
other, because the one expresses more distinctly than the other the
cause or reason of the changes [. . . .] (G 1:382–83/WF 52; G 2:57/L
337)
The thought expressed in the final sentence of this passage appears to be roughly
this. When some created thing undergoes a change, it will be active with re-
spect to that change just in case it represents (or expresses) the reason for that
change more distinctly than any other creature. If it does not, then it will be
passive and whatever does represent that reason most distinctly will be active.
Thus suppose Jones decides to speak to Smith and does. Smith then perceives
11 See A 6.4:1620/G 7:312/LC 311/MP 79; PNG 13.
12 Cf. G 3:636/L 659.
13 As we shall see below, there is more to a monad’s acting ideally than just its perceiving dis-

tinctly, insofar as God plays a role too. But considering the active monad only, we can say, as
Leibniz does, that its acting consists in its having the distinct perception.

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the sounds coming from Jones. Leibniz’s thought is that if Jones represents
(perceives) the reason for the change she undergoes (that is, her deciding to
speak) more distinctly than does Smith (or anyone else), then Jones will be
the cause of that change. If however Smith represents (perceives) that reason
more distinctly than Jones (and every other created thing), then Smith will be
its cause. Analogous remarks apply to the change undergone by Smith.
This preliminary analysis suggests the following first approximation of Leib-
niz’s theory of ideal action:
(IA1) The active thing with respect to some change is the one with the most
distinct representation of the reason for that change, whereas the ones
which represent that reason less distinctly (i.e., more confusedly) are pas-
sive with respect to that change.14
In order to push our understanding of this proposal still further, we must next
clarify what is meant by distinct perception, or more generally, distinct repre-
sentation.

1.2 Distinct Representation

I will not here be attempting anything so ambitious as a general account of
distinct representation in Leibniz. One reason for this is that what he means by
distinct representation can seem to vary from one context to the next. Since I
am interested in the concept only insofar as it figures in his discussions of ideal
action, my approach will be to look to these discussions in particular for clues
about its content.
The first clue comes from the Monadology, where, as we have seen, Leibniz
introduces his treatment of monadic interaction with this comment:
14 In some texts Leibniz appears to offer an account of the connection between distinctness and

activity which conflicts with (IA1) (see G 2:13/DM 15; G 2:47/AG 76; NE 210). On this account, the
activity of a monad consists not in the mere having of a distinct perception, but in an increase in the
distinctness of its perception, whereas its passion consists in its perception becoming less distinct
or more confused. This account appears to conflict with (IA1) because a monad could evidently
perceive the reason for some change distinctly—and therefore be active according to (IA1)—even
while its perception is becoming on the whole less distinct. Thus suppose some monad simulta-
neously performs actions A1, A2, and A3. It then ceases to perform A1 and A2, while continuing
to perform A3. According to (IA1), the monad’s perception of the reason for A3 must be distinct,
but its formerly distinct perceptions of the reasons for A1 and A2 must have become confused. All
other things being equal, then, the monad’s total perceptual state must have become less distinct.
So whereas the monad would be active on (IA1), it would be completely passive according to this
alternative account. Such difficulties have led some commentators to conclude that this alterna-
tive proposal ‘must be regarded as an aberration’ (Kneale 1972, 234) or that at some point it must
have given way to a different account as Leibniz ‘sharpened’ his views (Brandom 1981, 160–61).
However, I would suggest that when Leibniz talks about increasing and decreasing perceptual
distinctness in this context, what he means is just that a monad acts with respect to a given change
when its relevant perceptions (that is, those pertaining to that change) are becoming more distinct,
and is acted upon when its relevant perceptions are becoming more confused. If this is in fact what
Leibniz had in mind, then there may be no conflict with (IA1). For since (IA1) specifies that acting
(externally) involves coming to have a distinct perception of the reason for some change, it stands
to reason that when a monad acts, it will realize a net increase in the distinctness of those of its
perceptions which are relevant to that change.

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49. The creature is said to act externally insofar as it has perfection,

and to be acted upon by another, insofar as it is imperfect. Thus we
attribute action to the monad insofar as it has distinct perceptions,
and passion insofar as it has confused perceptions.
In inferring the second claim from the first, he clearly assumes, as he explicitly
states elsewhere, that the perfection of a monad consists in its distinct percep-
tion. But then in the very next section he has this to say about perfection:
50. And one creature is more perfect than another in that we find in
it that which provides an a priori reason for that which happens in
the other; and this is why we say that it acts on the other.
Taking these remarks together yields the conclusion that the distinct percep-
tions of a monad are those which provide a priori reasons for what happens
in others.15 Thus, bearing in mind what we learned from other texts—namely
that these perceptions are supposed to be perceptions of these reasons—we can
see Leibniz as suggesting more generically that a distinct perception of some
thing x is a perception with the property of being such as to make (or be apt to
make) x known.
The essay ‘A Specimen of Discoveries of the Admirable Secrets of a General
Nature’, written nearly thirty years earlier, reinforces this point:
[T]hat thing with the more distinct expression is judged to act, and
that with the more confused expression is judged to be passive,
since to act is a perfection and to be passive is an imperfection. And
[Eaque] that thing is thought to be a cause from the state of which
a reason for changes is most easily given. . . . And causes are not
derived from a real influx, but from the providing of a reason. (A
6.4:1620/G 7:312/LC 311/MP 79)
Assuming that whatever acts is a cause, it follows from what Leibniz says here
that the thing with the most distinct expression also supplies a reason most
readily. He does not exactly say so, but his thought appears to be that repre-
sentational distinctness just is this property of representing a thing in such a
way as to make (or be apt to make) it known.16
In other texts Leibniz makes an ostensibly similar point, but in terms of
intelligible explanations rather than reasons. Here is a representative example:
[Concerning] the true action or passion of a true substance, we can
take to be its action, which we attribute to itself, the change through
15 Cf. NE 475: ‘The reason is the known truth the connection of which with some lesser known

truth makes us give our assent to the latter. But especially and par excellence, we call that a
“reason”—even an “a priori reason”—which is the cause not only of our judgement, but also of
the truth itself’.
16 A closer look at this passage in context suggests that Leibniz actually means to distinguish

between causation, which occurs when one body influences another, and activity, which involves
substances. This makes no difference for the point I am making, however, for as we shall see below
he believes that causes in this sense are relevantly analogous to active substances.

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which it tends toward its perfection; and likewise we can take to

be its passion and attribute to an outside cause the change through
which the contrary happens to it, [. . . ] because in the first case the
substance itself and in the second the outer things serve to explain
the change in an intelligible way. (NE 211)17
According to this remark the actor with respect to some change is that thing
which affords an intelligible explanation of the change; further, if something
undergoes a change for which it supplies no adequate explanation, then it can
be said to have been acted upon by whatever thing does provide such an ex-
planation. Given what Leibniz says elsewhere about the connection between
activity and distinctness, then, his thought appears to be that a distinct percep-
tion of the reason for some change is one which imparts to us an understanding
of why that change took place. In other words, it makes known the very reason
which is its object. This passage and others like it therefore serve to reinforce
the conclusion drawn from the Monadology.
Leibniz likes to illustrate his idea that the actor provides the intelligible
explanation by comparing it with what happens, on his view, in cases of body-
body interaction. Though he discerns nothing unintelligible in the idea of one
body exerting a real or physical influence on another, and sometimes even
grants that such interaction occurs,18 he still believes that by itself experience
provides an insufficient basis for determining which body is the cause and
which the effect. This is because with any physical event we confront an ‘equiv-
alence of hypotheses’ in that what happens can be explained by arbitrarily
many empirically adequate suppositions about the motions of the bodies in-
volved. Leibniz’s favorite example is that of a ship moving through water. We
may find it natural to suppose that in such a case the ship propels itself and
causes the water around it to swirl. According to Leibniz, however, it would
be equally consistent with all available empirical evidence to suppose that the
water causes the boat to move, or that the boat and the water are both partial
causes of the various motions. Experience alone does not single out the correct
hypothesis, and so in order to discover the true cause, Leibniz suggests, we
must look beyond experience and ask which hypothesis provides us with the
most intelligible explanation of what happens:
[W]e attribute action to that substance with the more distinct ex-
pression, and we call it the cause, just as when a body floats in wa-
ter there are an infinity of movements of the parts of water, which
make it the case that the place the body vacates is always filled up
in the shortest way. This is why we say that this body is the cause
of the motion, because by its means we can explain distinctly what
happens. But if we examine what is physical and real in the mo-
tion, we can very well suppose that the body is in repose and that
all the rest is in motion in accordance with this hypothesis, since ev-
ery motion in itself is only a relative thing, that is to say, is a change
17 See also G 4:486/WF 20; NE 195; AG 279.
18 See G 6:570/WF 199; NE 60; G 3:505; G 7:398/AG 336/L 702.

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of position which cannot be assigned to any one thing with mathe-

matical precision; but we attribute it to a body in such a way as to
explain everything most distinctly. (G 2:69)
I take it that by distinct explanation Leibniz means nothing other than intelli-
gible explanation. Hence, when he claims at the end that we attribute action to
a body ‘in such a way as to explain everything most distinctly’, his point is just
that we favor that hypothesis which explains everything most intelligibly (that
is, which confers the most understanding upon one who grasps it). But notice
that he also says we consider a given body the cause because ‘by its means we
can explain distinctly what happens’. Apparently, then, the body which is ac-
tive according to the most intelligible hypothesis will be the one by appeal to
which we can explain the changes in the most intelligible way. As he points out
in this text and several others, the cause in a case of body-body interaction is
in this respect much like the actor in a case of interaction involving a monad.19
All of these texts from Leibniz’s discussions of monadic interaction point
to the same conclusion: to represent something distinctly is to represent it in
such a way as to make it knowable by us.20 We can therefore clarify Leibniz’s
proposal by supplanting (IA1) with this:
(IA2) The active thing with respect to some change is the one which provides
the intelligible explanation for that change, and the thing which under-
goes some change for which it does not provide an intelligible explana-
tion is passive with respect to that change.

1.3 Divine Accommodation

Some commentators write as if Leibniz’s theory of ideal interaction amounts
to nothing more than some thesis in the vicinity of (IA2), that is, some thesis
19 See A 6.4:1620/G 7:312/LC 311/MP 79; G 2:57/L 337; G 1:382–83/WF 52; G 4:486–87/WF 20.
20 Evidence for this account can also be found in other contexts. For example, at T 356 Leibniz
claims that confused or imperfect representations suppress something in the sense that they repre-
sent ‘more than we see there’, just as our ideas of sensible qualities represent various minute mo-
tions which we cannot notice because of their multiplicity and smallness. We sense these qualities,
he says, but we are unaware of the small perceptions of motions that compose these sensations,
and thus we cannot represent the qualities distinctly. To represent them distinctly would be to rep-
resent them in such a way that we could discern their contents or natures—in effect, to represent
them as they truly are, as complexes of tiny corporeal shapes and motions. And this is beyond
us. According to this passage, then, to represent something such as a reason distinctly would be
to represent it in such a way as to make (or be apt to make) that reason—or, what is the same,
its content—known to us.This account of distinct representation may helpfully be contrasted with
that of Robert Brandom, who construes more distinct representation as representation which is
‘richer and more specific in content’ (1981, 162). On my view, the distinctness of a representation
is a function not of the richness or specificity of its content, but of the accessibility of that content
to us. As I see it, part of Leibniz’s point in the passage just discussed is that a confused represen-
tation can have a very rich and specific, but inaccessible, content. He offers the example of ideas
of sensible qualities, which ‘represent only the small movements carried out in the organs’. As
many such movements are represented, these ideas have a rather rich and specific content. Yet
they represent only confusedly. Confusion therefore does not consist in a penurious or inspecific
content; it consists rather in there being in the representation ‘more than we see there’.

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linking activity with distinct representation.21 However, I believe that (IA2)

gives us only half the story. Note that (IA2) is not even properly speaking a
theory of action. It does tell us that substances act by supplying explanations,
but it does nothing to explain on an intuitive level how providing an explana-
tion amounts to a kind of activity. (As Loeb (ibid) correctly notes, expressive
relations are non-causal.) For that, we need something more.
Leibniz appears to have appreciated this point, for in most of his presen-
tations of the theory he does provide us with that something more. It is what
may be called the thesis of divine accommodation: roughly, that those substances
which represent reasons distinctly moved God in the beginning to adapt other
substances to them in order to achieve harmony, so that the former substances
can be said to have influenced the latter ones in a roundabout fashion. Here is
how he explains the idea in the Theodicy:
We can nonetheless give a true and philosophical sense to this mu-
tual dependence that we conceive between soul and body. It is that
one of these substances depends on the other ideally, insofar as the
reason for what happens in the one can be conveyed by that which
is in the other—something which had already taken place in the
decrees of God, as God ordered in advance the harmony that there
would be between them. This automaton, which would perform
the servant’s function, would depend upon me ideally, in virtue
of the knowledge of him who, foreseeing my future orders, would
have rendered it capable of serving me at the appointed time in the
future. The knowledge of my future volitions would have moved
[mû] this great artisan, who would have formed the automaton ac-
cordingly: my influence would be objective, and his physical. For
insofar as the soul has perfection and distinct thoughts, God has
accommodated the body to the soul and has arranged things in ad-
vance so that the body is driven to execute its orders; and insofar
as the soul is imperfect and its perceptions are confused, God has
accommodated the soul to the body, so that the soul lets itself be in-
clined by the passions which arise from corporeal representations.
This produces the same effect and the same appearance as if the one
depended on the other immediately and by means of a physical in-
fluence. (T 66)
A few lines later, he adds that substances influence one another in like fashion:
21 For instance, Rescher maintains that ‘In the system of Leibniz, causality is definable strictly in
terms of monadic perception . . . . It is solely in terms of clearness of perception that efficient causa-
tion, itself a phenomenon rather than a monadic reality, comes to be well-founded in the monadic
realm’ (1986, 79–80). In the same vein, Loeb claims that in putting forward the theory that ‘one sub-
stance “acts” upon another if it expresses the other more clearly than the other expresses it, where
“expression” is a noncausal relation of representation or correlation’, Leibniz aims to ‘explicate the
sense in which one substance “acts” upon another entirely in terms of noncausal relations between
those substances’ (1981, 271). (Note that both Rescher and Loeb represent Leibniz as explicating
activity in terms of the possession of clear perception, whereas Leibniz himself emphasizes that
activity requires not just clear but distinct perception.)

10
 MONADIC INTERACTION

And the same thing must apply to all that we conceive of the actions
of simple substances on one another. It is that each is assumed to
act on the other in proportion to its perfection, although this be
only ideally and in the reasons of things, as God in the beginning
ordered one substance to another, according to the perfection or
imperfection that there is in each . . . . (ibid)
Leibniz says much in these passages, but four points in particular should be
noted. First, he emphasizes that in the beginning God ordered or accommodated
souls to one another, souls to bodies, and bodies to souls. Second, he describes
this process of accommodation as one in which ‘God has ordered in advance
the harmony that there would be between them’. So apparently the point of
accommodating these things to one another is to bring them into harmony.
Third, Leibniz explains that for any soul x and body y, God adapts x to y to
the extent that x has confused representations, and y to x to the extent that x
has distinct representations. Likewise, bearing in mind that the perfection of a
monad is its distinct perception, and the imperfection its confused perception,
he in effect indicates that for any souls x and y, God adapts x to y to the ex-
tent that y has distinct perceptions and x has confused perceptions. These are
actually rather rough formulations of the points Leibniz presumably wants to
make. In view of what has come before, I would suggest that we can put them
somewhat more precisely, though still roughly, as follows:
For any soul x, body y, and change z, God adapts x to y with respect to
z just in case y represents the reason for z distinctly and x represents the
reason for z confusedly.
For any souls x, y and change z, God adapts x to y with respect to z just
in case y perceives the reason for z distinctly and x perceives the reason
for z confusedly.
Though Leibniz does not say as much, I believe his thought is that things are
adapted in this particular way rather than another because God wants to pre-
serve the perfections of creatures as much as possible. If a soul or body rep-
resents a reason distinctly, that is a kind of perfection and so God is not going
to adapt it to others, thus eliminating that perfection; rather, God is going to
adapt others to it.22 Fourth, Leibniz says that in all this the active creature’s
influence is objective, and God’s physical. Clearly, God influences through
adapting things to one another. But in what way does the active creature influ-
ence others? Leibniz does not say exactly, but he does mention that ideal action
occurs ‘in the reasons of things’. His thought may therefore be that the active
creature acts through giving God a reason to make changes in other things. If
22 Note that if a substance’s having a distinct perception is the reason why God accommodates

other things to it, then it is also the reason why those things have certain modifications. This is
why Leibniz often says that the active thing provides the reason not only for its own change but
for the changes of others. The active substance explains why the passive thing accords with it, by
explaining why God accommodates the passive thing to it. As Leibniz himself notes at DM 32, we
often omit this intermediate step in practice.

11
 MONADIC INTERACTION

so, then the ‘objective’ influence of the creature would consist in its rationally
determining God to order things one way rather than another.
This last suggestion receives confirmation elsewhere. We have already en-
countered in the Monadology the claim that a monad acts insofar as it has dis-
tinct perceptions (§49) and insofar as ‘we find within it that which provides an
a priori reason for what happens in the other’ (§50). To this Leibniz immediately
adds:
51. But in simple substances this is only an ideal influence of one
monad on the other, which can have its effect only through the in-
tervention of God, insofar as in the ideas of God a monad demands
with reason [demande avec raison] that God, in ordering the others
from the beginning of things, have regard for it. For since a created
monad cannot have a physical influence on the interior of another,
it is only by this means that the one can have any dependence on
the other.
52. And it is by this that actions and passions among creatures are
mutual. For God, comparing two simple substances, finds in each
reasons that oblige him to accommodate [l’obligent à y accommoder]
the other to it, and consequently what is active in some respects is
passive according to another point of consideration: active insofar
as what is known distinctly in it provides us with the reason for
what happens in another, and passive insofar as the reason for what
happens in it is found in what is known distinctly in another.
Here we read that the active monad ‘demands with reason’ that God have re-
gard for it, and that God finds within monads ‘reasons that oblige him to ac-
commodate’ them to one another. In a letter to Des Bosses, Leibniz puts the
point this way: ‘The modifications of one monad are the ideal causes of the
modifications of other monads [. . . ] insofar as there appear in one monad rea-
sons which moved God from the beginning of things to establish modifications
in another monad [quae Deum ad modificationes in alia Monade constituendas ab
initio rerum moverunt]’ (G 2:475/L 608). Leibniz evidently means to suggest
that the active substance moves or influences God through a kind of rational
demand or determination, that is, through giving the divine being a reason to
order other creatures a certain way.23 God then in turn (physically) influences
23 The idea that substances act by rationally demanding and determining also features promi-

nently in Sukjae Lee’s (2004) account of the monad’s internal action, that is, its progression from
one state or perception to the next. According to Lee, God conserves a creature by (re)creating
it in accordance with its prior state, that state being the cause of the subsequent one by virtue of
rationally determining God to (re)create the monad, in the next moment, in that latter state. This
intriguing proposal deserves more attention than I can pay it here, but let me at least indicate why
I consider it unsatisfactory. In view of the foregoing analysis, it should be clear that the internal
action of monads, as Lee understands it, amounts to something like ideal action. However, Leib-
niz himself seems to conceive the internal action of a monad as real or physical (and therefore
immediate) action. For instance, he claims that ‘Souls exercise a physical and immediate action
in themselves, for they are always immediate causes, and often masters of their natural actions’
(G 6:570/WF 199; see also G 1:391/WF 54; T 400). Hence, though I agree with Lee that created

12
 MONADIC INTERACTION

those creatures in accordance with this determination, so that in this way the
active substance can truly be said to influence other created substances, though
only ‘through the intervention of God’. Elsewhere Leibniz characterizes this in-
direct influence of the created monad as a kind of ‘spiritual and moral motion’
(G 6:421–22/H 427) and as an influx that is moral rather than physical (AG
279).24
Leibniz advances the thesis of divine accommodation in many other texts.25
I shall not discuss them here, however, since the point I want to make should
already be clear: this thesis plays a critical role in the theory of ideal action.
Divine accommodation is, as it were, where the action is. The idea expressed in
(IA2), in essence that active things explain and passive things do not, does not
reveal the connection between explaining (or representing reasons distinctly)
and acting. For that, we need the thesis of divine accommodation, according to
which a thing’s explanatory power, a kind of perfection, moves God to bring
other things into harmony with it in order to preserve that perfection. A fuller
statement of Leibniz’s proposal would therefore look something like this:
(IA3) The actor A with respect to some change acts on or influences other things
by rationally determining God to adapt those things to it from the begin-
ning in order to bring them into harmony; A determines God in this way
in virtue of its providing an intelligible explanation (that is, a distinct
representation of the reason) for the change.26
substances act by rationally determining God, I believe he errs in representing this action as the
internal (or immanent) rather than the external (or transeunt) action of substances.
24 See also G 6:423–24/H 428–29.
25 See DM 15, 32; G 2:71; G 4:486/WF 20; G 4:510/L 503; G 4:558/WF 111; G 3:465/WF 177; G

6:570/WF 199; NE 177; G 3:403/AG 195; AG 202-3, 279; L 608.

26 One feature of (IA3) requires further defense. I claim that on Leibniz’s view God gives priority

to certain perceptions over others because they are more distinct and intelligible, thus contributing
more to the perfection of the world. This makes the distinctness of a perception in a sense prior to,
and explanatory of, God’s decision to favor it over others. But this is not the only way Leibniz has
been read. According to Wilson (1992, 343–45), he believes that one perception’s being more dis-
tinct than another consists in its enjoying rational priority over the other in the mind of God. This
position clearly implies that my (IA3) misrepresents Leibniz, since a perception’s being distinct
cannot explain why it enjoys God’s favor if God’s favoring it explains its being distinct. However,
my reading should be preferred to Wilson’s for two reasons. First, as I have already shown, there
is no need to appeal to rational priority in the mind of God in order to explicate the notion of dis-
tinct perception. An abundance of evidence points to the conclusion that to perceive something
distinctly is to perceive it in such a way as to make (or be apt to make) that thing known, and
this evidence is much stronger than any we have for Wilson’s alternative. Second, that alternative
appears to entail egregious violations of the principle of sufficient reason, or more specifically, of
Leibniz’s doctrine that God never does anything without a reason. In view of this doctrine, if God
gives priority to one perception over another, there must be some reason for this. But what could
this reason be? The most natural thought is the one I have urged: that God gives priority to cer-
tain perceptions because they are distinct and therefore more perfect. But Wilson commits herself
to rejecting this thought, since she wants to explicate perceptual distinctness in terms of rational
priority in the mind of God. No further possibilities suggest themselves. So her view appears
to introduce into Leibniz’s system precisely the sort of unintelligibility he so detested, and that
he criticized Locke and Bayle, among others, for tolerating (see, e.g., NE 56, 131, 165–66, 381–82,
403–4; T 340). Given that my view provides a ready answer to the question why God favors some
perceptions over others, this difficulty would seem to tell decisively against Wilson’s proposal and
in favor of mine.

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

I will in fact take this to be the complete and final version of the theory of
ideal action.

2 Real versus Ideal Action

Now that we have a reasonably clear picture of how ideal action is supposed
to work, I can clarify how ideal activity differs from that which Leibniz calls
real or physical. Three points are salient.
First, whereas ideal action involves influencing something only indirectly,
through the mediation of God, real action involves a direct influence. The
dependence arising from ideal influence, Leibniz explains in the New Essays,
‘is only a metaphysical one, which consists in God’s taking account of one of
them in regulating the other, or taking more account of one than the other ac-
cording to the inherent perfections of each’. In contrast, ‘physical dependence
would consist in an immediate influence which the dependent one would re-
ceive from the other’ (NE 177). A similar suggestion can be found in the Dis-
course, where Leibniz writes that in the ‘language of metaphysics’, ‘to act is to
determine immediately’ (DM 32). It would be reasonable to assume that speak-
ing in accordance with the language of metaphysics is equivalent to speaking
‘in metaphysical rigor’, as he often puts it. But in a letter to Arnauld (to be dis-
cussed below) Leibniz claims that action in the metaphysically rigorous sense
is real action (G 2:133). So his thought in the Discourse appears to be that action
which is real is by definition immediate determination.27
Second, real action involves efficient causation, whereas ideal action con-
sists primarily in final causation.28 Bearing in mind that in the relevant contexts
Leibniz uses “physical” and “real” interchangeably, we can see him pointing
up this very contrast in passages such as these:
Thus we can say that in the intention of God and in the order of
final causes, one substance depends on another, God having had
regard for the one in producing the other, although according to
physical influence, or in the order of efficient causes, the one has as
little dependence on the other as if it were alone in the world with
God. (G 4:578/WF 153)
Objects do not act upon intelligent substances as efficient and phys-
ical causes, but as final and moral causes. (G 6:422/H 427; cf. G
2:69)
At NE 475, Leibniz remarks that ‘the cause in things corresponds to the reason
in truths. This is why the cause itself is often called a reason, and particu-
larly the final cause’. And he writes to Molanus that ‘the reasons for what was
27 For additional evidence of the direct/indirect contrast, see DM 14; G 6:570/WF199; NE 211; T
66.
28 In a draft letter to Arnauld composed in late 1686, Leibniz toys with the thought that ideal

actors are better viewed as exemplar rather than final causes (G 2:69, 71). As far as I can tell,
however, he never takes up this suggestion elsewhere.

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

created by understanding are the final causes or plans of the one who made
them’ (G 4:299/AG 242). Such comments suggest that Leibniz would consider
ideal actors to be final causes because they provide reasons why other things are
thus and so. They rationally determine God to accommodate other creatures
to them, and consequently God effects changes to the modifications of those
creatures through efficient causation. Ideal actors therefore explain why other
creatures accord with them, and in this sense they are final causes of the states
of others.
Third, ideal action takes place ‘in the ideal region of the possibles, that
is, in the divine understanding’ (T 335); real action does not. To speak pre-
cisely, Leibniz’s view is not that one (created) substance rationally determines
God to make certain changes to others, though he often expresses himself this
way; rather, his claim is that the idea of the substance, something which ex-
ists in the mind of God prior to creation, determines him to make adjustments
to—evidently—other such ideas. Leibniz emphasizes this point himself: ‘each
thing as an idea has contributed, before its existence, to the resolution that has
been made upon the existence of all things’ (T 9; cf. M 51). Thus, ideal action
is something which takes place in the mind of God prior to the decision to cre-
ate; it concerns possibles rather than actuals. In fact, when Leibniz writes in a
discussion of his doctrine of ‘striving possibles’ that the struggle between them
‘can be only ideal, that is to say, can only be a conflict of reasons in the most per-
fect understanding’ (T 201), he implies that “ideal” by definition refers, aptly
enough, to things which happen in the mind of God. In contrast, all indications
point to real action being something which takes place outside the mind of God
and which involves not possibles but actuals—either God or things which have
been created and thus made actual.
Compare this with Leibniz’s use of “real” and “ideal” in discussions of
the ‘labyrinth of the continuum’. Without going into details, we may note
that his strategy for escaping this labyrinth involves distinguishing between
the disjoint realms of the real and the ideal. The difference, he explains, is
that whereas real things are actual beings such as substances and bodies, ideal
things, such as space, time, and geometrical figures, pertain ‘to possibles and
to actual things considered as possible’.29 Space, for instance, which Leibniz
describes as a ‘mental thing’,30 ‘is not something substantial, but ideal, and
consists in possibilities or an order of coexistents which is in some way possi-
ble’.31 Likewise, geometrical figures concern possibilities: ‘From the fact that
a mathematical body cannot be resolved into first constituents we can, at any
rate, infer that it isn’t real, but something mental, indicating only the possibil-
ity of parts, not anything actual’.32 Since on Leibniz’s view possibles reside in
the region of God’s ideas,33 we can conclude that ideal entities belong to that
realm as well. In contrast, real things such as bodies and monads are actual
29 G 2:282/AG 185/L 539.
30 G 2:268/AG 178/L 536.
31 G 2:278–79. See also G 2:379; G 7:363/AG 324–25; G 4:568/WF 122–23; GM 7:242.
32 G 2:268/AG 178/L 535–36.
33 See A 6.4:1618/G 7:311/LC 307/MP 77; T 184, 189, 335; M 44.

15
 MONADIC INTERACTION

rather than merely possible, and as such exist outside the mind of God.34 So in
his discussions of both activity and the composition of the continuum, Leibniz
appears to use “real” and “ideal” in roughly the same way, the former referring
to things or processes which are actual, the latter to those which are or concern
possibles, and thus exist or occur in the mind of God.
Combining the three foregoing points, we can say that if one actual being
directly influences another by way of efficient causation, then the action is real
(or physical); but if a being indirectly influences another in virtue of its idea in
the mind of God having been a final cause of the adjustments God makes to
other ideas, the action is only ideal. From this we can see that when Leibniz
speaks of real action, influence, or causation, “real” does not mean, as we may
be tempted to suppose, genuine or true. We admittedly use the word that way
often in everyday speech, as when we say things like ‘Overpopulation poses
no real threat’ or ‘Will the real Elvis please stand up?’ This may explain why
commentators have tended to assume that for Leibniz, all genuine action is
real, an assumption which has led them to (mis)take his rejection of all real
monadic interaction for a rejection of monadic interaction tout court. But it
should now be clear that for Leibniz “real” does not carry this sense at all.
In his idiolect, rather, “real” means something like pertaining to that which is
actual, a fact in view of which we should no longer find it tempting to make
this assumption.

3 Why Ideal Action is Truly Action

Having sketched the outlines of Leibniz’s theory of ideal action and clarified
the difference between ideal and real action, I can now present my arguments
against the traditional reading of Leibniz and in favor of my alternative. Re-
call that on the traditional view, Leibniz simply denies that created monads
ever causally interact with other created things; and further, when he speaks
of monads acting ideally he has in mind a merely apparent interaction which
serves to explain why they appear to interact when in fact they don’t. In the
next section, I will take a closer look at Leibniz’s alleged denials of monadic
interaction and argue that they have been widely misunderstood. But first, I
want to argue that the traditional reading also goes wrong insofar as it repre-
sents ideal action not as genuine but as merely apparent action.
It is true that in the Theodicy Leibniz writes that the ideal interaction be-
tween soul and body ‘produces the same effect and the same appearance as
if the one depended on the other immediately and by means of a physical in-
fluence’ (T 66).35 Notice, however, that what he purports to save is not just
any appearance of influence, but the appearance of an immediate and physical
influence. His point appears to be that substances appear to interact by way of
this sort of influence precisely because they interact ideally. So in a sense the
34 See, e.g., G 4:491–92/AG 146–47/WF 45–46; G 2:268/AG 178–79/L 535–36; G 2:282–83/AG

185–86/L 539; G 2:379; G 7:562.

35 Cf. G 6:568/WF 197.

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

monad’s acting ideally does explain why it appears to exert an immediate and
physical influence. It by no means follows, though, that ideal action is merely
apparent action. For Leibniz’s point may be that the appearance of a direct and
physical influence between soul and body arises from the fact that they exert
an indirect and non-physical (though nonetheless genuine) causal influence on
one another. This text therefore provides no support for the traditional suppo-
sition that ideal activity is merely apparent activity. Moreover, no other texts
can be found in the Leibnizian corpus in which he so much as characterizes
ideal activity that way.36 In contrast, no fewer than four lines of evidence point
to the conclusion that Leibniz regards ideal action as a genuine form of causal
activity.
First, Leibniz indicates in a number of texts that the theory of ideal action
specifies a sense in which it is true to say that created minds interact with one
another and with bodies. Consider that after arguing in §14 of the Discourse
on Metaphysics that substances correspond ‘without acting on one another im-
mediately’, he concludes the section by noting that ‘since we attribute to other
things as to causes acting on us what we perceive in a certain way, we must
consider the foundation for this judgement and the element of truth there is
in it’. He then proceeds to outline a version of the theory of ideal action in
§15. Much later in the work, harking back to this outline, he purports to have
‘already noted how one can truly say that particular substances act on one an-
other’ (DM 27). Leibniz reinforces this point in subsequent writings. In his
‘Clarification of the New System’, for instance, he explains:
I do not even shy away from saying that the soul moves the body,
and as a Copernican speaks truly of the rising of the sun, a Platonist
of the reality of matter, a Cartesian the reality of sensible qualities,
provided that we understand them soundly, I believe likewise that
it is quite true to say that substances act on one another, provided
that we understand that the one is the cause of changes in the other
in consequence of the laws of harmony. (G 4:495/WF 49)37
Likewise, he claims in the Theodicy, some fourteen years later, that the theory
of ideal action allows him to ‘give a true and philosophical sense to this mutual
36 In a published reply to Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, Leibniz does write that there

is ‘constraint in substances only externally and in appearances’ (G 4:558/WF 111). This might be
taken as evidence for the thought that ideal action involves a merely apparent influence. However,
we can plausibly suppose that in this remark Leibniz means to deny only that there is a real or
physical constraint in substances, except in appearances. Cf. T 66.
37 Leibniz offers no guidance, at least in this context, concerning the sound interpretation of the

claims of the Copernican, the Platonist, and the Cartesian. He does, however, tell us that when
he speaks of substances interacting, we should understand him to be claiming that one substance
causes changes in another ‘in consequence of the laws of harmony’. Leibniz’s meaning is obscure,
but what he has in mind, I believe, is nothing other than the thought that God accommodates
one substance to another in order to harmonize them, that is, to bring them into accord with the
‘laws of harmony’. As I see it, therefore, Leibniz is alluding here to the theory of ideal action. His
point is that on a sound understanding of his talk of substantial interaction, he is claiming that one
substance acts on another not directly and by way of efficient causation, but ideally, through the
mediation of God and in accordance with the ‘laws of harmony’.

17
 MONADIC INTERACTION

dependence that we conceive between the soul and the body’ (T 66).38 Such
passages reveal that from Leibniz’s point of view, the account of ideal action
provides a sense in which monads can truly be said to interact.39 But notice
that it could not perform this function if ideal action were not a genuine form
of action. If it were action in appearance only, then even if monads did ‘act’
in this sense, it would still be false to say that they act (externally), and so the
theory would fail to accomplish what Leibniz claims for it. Assuming that he
realizes this, we can therefore conclude that on his view ideal actors truly act.
But then Leibniz must also believe that monads truly interact, since he affirms
that they interact ideally.
Second, in his discussions of ideal activity Leibniz often straightforwardly
affirms that monads interact with or depend upon one another. For instance,
after writing to Arnauld that ‘each individual substance or complete being is
like a world apart, independent of every other thing but God’, Leibniz hastens
to add that

this independence does not prevent the intercourse [commerce] of

substances with one other, for as all created substances are a contin-
ual production of the same sovereign being according to the same
designs, and expressing the same universe or the same phenom-
ena, they correspond exactly with each other. And this makes us
say that the one acts on the other, because the one expresses more
distinctly than the other the cause or reason of the changes [. . . .]
It is thus, in my opinion, that the intercourse [commerce] between
created substances must be understood, and not as a real physical
influence or dependence, which we could never conceive distinctly.
(G 2:57/L 337)

Likewise, in his 1698 essay ‘On Nature Itself’, Leibniz remarks that
What we can establish about the transeunt actions of creatures may
better be explained elsewhere; in fact, I have already partly ex-
plained it: the intercourse [commercium] of substances or of monads
arises not by influx but by a consensus originating in their pre-
formation by God, so that each one is accommodated to external
things [ad extranea accommodato] while it follows the internal force
and laws of its own nature [. . . .] (L 503/G 4:510)
Texts such as these certainly do not give the impression that Leibniz is trying to
explain why monads which do not interact give the appearance that they do.
To the contrary, they give the impression that he is trying to explain the sense in
which monads do interact if not by way of a physical influx or dependence.40
38 Cf.G 2:47/AG 76; NE 74; T 290.
39 This is how the account allows him to preserve ordinary ways of speaking about the activity
and passivity of substances, a feature Leibniz touts as one of the advantages of his new system (see
G 4:486/AG 145/L 459/WF 20).
40 See also G 6:570/WF 199; G 6:421–22/H 427.

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Third, we have seen (in §1 above) that Leibniz’s descriptions of how ideal
action supposedly works suggest that it is a genuine, if non-standard, sort of
action in which a substance moves God to accommodate other substances to it,
thereby (indirectly) influencing those other substances. On this score Leibniz’s
language is very suggestive. As we have seen, he claims that monads ‘demand
with reason’ that God accommodate other monads to them in certain respects
(M 51), and that within monads there are reasons which ‘moved God from the
beginning of things to establish modifications in another monad’ (G 2:475/L
608), or which ‘oblige him to accommodate’ substances to one another (M 52).
Had Leibniz conceived of ideal action as merely apparent action, then it is hard
to see why he would describe his view in such terms. For they suggest that on
his view the active monad exerts a genuine influence of sorts on God, who
in turn influences other monads by ordering or accommodating them to the
active one, thus bringing it about that the active monad exerts a genuine or
‘objective’ (though indirect) influence on the others.41
Fourth, we have also seen that Leibniz classifies ideal action as a special
case of final causation. This is significant because unlike many of his fellow
early moderns, Leibniz does not dismiss final causes as spurious. Rather, all
indications are that he accepts final causation as a genuine form of causation.42
For instance, he characterizes God as ‘the common final and efficient cause of
things’ (AG 319/G 7:344), and he believes we should be attached to God ‘not
only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but also as to our mas-
ter and final cause’ (M 90).43 In §19 of the Discourse, Leibniz indicates that if
we eliminated final causes altogether, it would be ‘as if God proposed no end
or good in acting or as if the good were not the object of his will’. But he
also repeatedly insists (e.g., in the Theodicy) that the good is the object of God’s
will and that God does act for an end. Further, Leibniz maintains that in order
for nature to be explained well, physics must treat not only efficient but final
causes; ignoring the final causes, he says, would leave much about nature un-
explained, ‘just as a house would be badly explained if we were to describe
only the arrangement of its parts, but not its use’ (AG 254–55/G 4:398).44 Fi-
nally, Leibniz emphasizes that just as things take place through efficient causal-
ity in the material realm, so within the monad things take place through final
causality, as appetites drive it from one perception to the next.45 In view of
all this, Leibniz’s characterizations of ideal action as a kind of final causation
would seem to entail that monads which interact ideally do not merely appear
to interact, but truly do interact.
So much for my four lines of evidence. Though considered individually
41 One might object to Leibniz’s position by noting that ‘all creatures have their entire being from

God, and so they can neither act on him nor determine him’. For Leibniz’s reply, see G 6:423/H
428.
42 It has even been argued that Leibniz’s final causes are a species of efficient causality. See Carlin

2006.
43 Cf. AG 126–27/L 442; G 7:305/AG 152/L 489.
44 Cf. DM 19, 22; PNG 3, 11.
45 See, for example, T 62, 74; M 36, 79; G 7:344/AG 319; G 7:412/L 712; G 7:419/L 716–17.

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perhaps none of them would suffice to overturn the traditional reading, collec-
tively they make a powerful case for understanding the ideal action of monads
as a genuine causal influence. They suggest that Leibniz, far from taking the
radical line according to which finite minds never causally influence other cre-
ated things, actually believes that such minds do in a way interact with one
another and with bodies.46
In saying this, of course, I do not mean to suggest that the ideal influence
these created substances exert stands on a par with real influence. To the con-
trary, Leibniz may well regard ideal activity as a metaphysically thinner, less
robust form of causation than real activity, examples of which include God’s
creation and conservation of the world and the created monad’s production
of its states. My point is simply that on Leibniz’s view, the ideal influence of
created substances is, even if something less than real or physical influence,
nothing less than a genuine causal influence.

4 The Two-Approach Objection

Perhaps the most promising strategy for resisting this argument against the
traditional reading would be to interpret Leibniz along lines suggested by
Nicholas Jolley. Though he belongs squarely to the traditional camp, he takes a
more nuanced stance than most on this issue. He grants that in some contexts,
namely those pertaining to ideal action, Leibniz promotes a kind of reductivist
approach on which interaction is not eliminated but reduced (to ideal inter-
action). To his credit, Jolley even acknowledges that in such contexts Leibniz
‘sometimes suggests that our ordinary statements about causal interaction can
be understood in a way that they come out true’ (1998, 595). Thus, Jolley would
presumably allow that insofar as Leibniz commits to this reductive approach,
the traditional view is wrong. But Jolley would hasten to add that this poses
no insuperable challenge to the traditional view, because as it happens reduc-
tion is not Leibniz’s preferred approach to interaction. His ‘more typical’ and
even ‘dominant’ approach is rather one which favors elimination over reduc-
tion: it is the ‘better known’ eliminativist approach imputed to him by the
46 This view of ideal action also allows us to understand the sense in which, on Leibniz’s view,

Aristotle’s slogan that ‘nothing is in our understanding which does not come from the senses’ is
correct, even though in metaphysical rigor all ideas are innate. As Leibniz explains in §27 of the
Discourse, such ‘doxologies’ or ‘practicologies’ not only can be acceptable in ordinary usage, but
can even be given ‘a sense according to which they have nothing false in them, just as I have already
noted [in §15] how one can truly say that particular substances act on one another’ (DM 27; cf. NE
74). He then adds this important remark: ‘And in this same sense we can also say that we receive
knowledge from the outside by the ministry of the senses, because some external things contain or
express more particularly the reasons that determine our soul to certain thoughts’. Evidently he
means to suggest that ideas can be said to have an external source in the same sense in which, as he
explains earlier in the work (§15), substances can be said to interact, that is, in the ideal sense. More
precisely, assuming that to express reasons ‘more particularly’ is to express them more distinctly,
his suggestion appears to be that because certain thoughts are caused ideally by external things,
we can justifiably say that the ideas which enter into those thoughts have an external origin. For
more on this see Puryear 2008.

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traditional view (ibid). Hence, Jolley would say that even though it conflicts
with the reductive approach Leibniz sometimes advocates, in the final analysis
the traditional reading should be considered fundamentally correct. Clearly
if this interpretation were tenable, then my argument against the traditional
view and in favor of my alternative would ultimately fail. For defenders of
the traditional perspective, following Jolley, could simply grant that Leibniz
sometimes thinks monads interact ideally, and that his thinking this implies
that he believes monads truly do interact, without needing to relinquish their
belief that on Leibniz’s considered view monads never interact. Call this the
two-approach objection.
As it happens, the interpretation on which this objection turns is untenable.
Its most notable defect is that it requires us to make the rather unlikely sup-
position that Leibniz vacillated between these conflicting approaches not just
over the last thirty years of his life, but at the same general time and even in the
same writings. Understood as Jolley describes them, the approaches are mani-
festly incompatible; and Leibniz would have no doubt realized this: he would
not have confused them. So if he does in fact promote both, we would have to
suppose that he often switches abruptly and without warning from the one to
the other.47 For instance, we would have to say that in §14 of Discourse, at least
up to the end, he advocates the eliminative approach, whereas in §§15 and 27
he favors the reductive approach. And we would have to suppose that sim-
ilar switches occur in the correspondence with Arnauld (1686–87), the ‘New
System of the Nature and Communication of Substances’ (1695), the Theodicy
(1710), the Monadology (1714), and elsewhere. In brief, we would have to main-
tain that over the course of his mature period, Leibniz composed a number of
works in which he suddenly and unexpectedly shifts from one of these mutu-
ally exclusive approaches to the other. Could this really be the truth?
A slight but critical adjustment to Jolley’s view yields a much more appeal-
ing result. The adjustment is motivated by the fact that when Leibniz denies
that monads interact, he typically denies only that they interact through a real
or physical influence. Thus, after explaining to Arnauld how monads inter-
act ideally, Leibniz reflects: ‘It is thus, I believe, that the intercourse between
created substances must be understood and not as a real physical influence or
dependence’ (G 2:57/L 337). He includes what appears to be the same quali-
fication in the ‘New System’: ‘It is quite true that there is no real influence of
one created substance on another, speaking according to metaphysical rigor,
and that all these things, with all their reality, are continually produced by the
power of God’ (G 4:483/WF 17). Likewise in the Theodicy: ‘[T]he establishment
of this system demonstrates beyond a doubt that in the course of nature each
substance is the sole cause of all its actions, and that it is free of all physical
influence from every other substance, save the customary cooperation of God’
(T 300).48 And in the Monadology, alluding to the ideal action of one monad on
47 Jolley puts the point perhaps too gently, characterizing this duality as merely ‘a hesitation in

Leibniz’s thought between reductionist and eliminativist approaches to the issue of causal interac-
tion’ (ibid, 594).
48 See also T 59, 61, 66, 290, 291, 400, and the Preface at G 6:45/H 68–69.

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another, Leibniz remarks that ‘since a created monad cannot have a physical
influence on the interior of another, it is only by this means that the one can
have any dependence on the other’ (M 51). These are just a few of the avail-
able examples.49 They suggest that the eliminative approach Leibniz favors
involves not the elimination of monadic interaction tout court, as on Jolley’s
view, but only the elimination of real or physical interaction. In view of these
texts, then, we could accept Jolley’s claim that Leibniz endorses both elimi-
native and reductive approaches to interaction, but plausibly interpret those
approaches as harmonious. We could suppose that Leibniz advocates on the
one hand the elimination of real or physical monadic interaction, and on the
other the reduction of monadic interaction simpliciter to ideal action. In that
case, what he would be eliminating would be different from what he reduces,
and so the two approaches would be compatible. Understanding Leibniz this
way has the advantage that it allows us to see him not as vacillating between
competing approaches but as advancing a single, coherent position on interac-
tion.
Someone will perhaps object that we must see Leibniz as proposing to elimi-
nate all monadic interaction, because, the foregoing passages notwithstanding,
there are many texts in which he unequivocally states that created monads can-
not truly interact. Let us consider some of these texts, beginning with the one
Jolley provides as evidence of an eliminativist approach. In a letter of January
1688, Leibniz writes to Arnauld: ‘I maintain that one created substance does
not act upon another in metaphysical rigor, that is to say with a real influence’
(G 2:133).50 Though this remark might be taken as unmistakable evidence of
the sort of unrestricted eliminative approach Jolley imputes to Leibniz, note
that it can properly be so taken only if we assume that he considers all genuine
action to be real. For Leibniz explicitly indicates in this passage that in denying
that created substances can act ‘in metaphysical rigor’, what he means is that
they cannot exert a real influence. His thought is evidently that we speak ‘in
metaphysical rigor’ when we use words as they are ordinarily used in the ‘lan-
guage of metaphysics’, in which “action” refers specifically to real action, that
is, to an immediate determination (DM 32). But if not all genuine interaction is
real, as I contend, then what Leibniz says here in no way shows that he favors
simply eliminating interaction. It would show this only if we had something
we do not have: an independent reason for thinking that ideal action is not
genuine action, or that all genuine action is real. If instead real (or physical)
action is just one kind of action, one which is direct rather than indirect and
involves efficient rather than final causation, then what Leibniz denies in this
text is not that monads interact but only that they interact in the usual way.
Perhaps remarks like these, of which many examples can be found, would
serve Jolley’s purpose better:
49 In addition to those texts cited in the previous note, see A 6.4:1620/G 7:312/LC 311/MP 79;

AG 279; G 7:344/AG 319; G 2:47/AG 76; G 2:70–71; G 2:94/AG 83; G 6:568–69/WF 197; NE 135; G
7:420/AG 346; G 4:496/WF 50–51; G 1:383/WF52; G 2:122/WF 65.
50 Cf. A 6.4:1620/G 7:312/LC 311/MP 79; C 521/AG 33/L 269; A 6.4:1638/LC 333; DM 28, 32; G

4:483/AG 143/WF 17; G 1:391/WF 54.

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We could therefore say in some way and in a proper sense, though

departing from custom, that one particular substance never acts
upon another particular substance nor is it acted upon by it [. . . .]
(DM 14)
I do not admit any action of substances upon each other in the
proper sense, since no reason can be found for one monad influenc-
ing another. (Leibniz to De Volder, 20 June 1703, L 530/G 2:251/AG
176)51
We may be tempted to infer from such statements that Leibniz rejects outright
any interaction among created substances, since it might be thought that what-
ever is not action in the ‘proper’ sense, being only loosely or improperly de-
scribable as action, is not truly action. But this is not the only way these texts
can be read. We could suppose, not unreasonably, that the proper sense of a
term is just the metaphysically rigorous one, that is, the one customary in meta-
physical contexts. We saw above that action in this latter sense is real (or phys-
ical) action. So from this point of view what Leibniz denies in these passages
is only that monads can have any real (or physical) influence on one another.
More to the point, on this reading that which is not action in the proper sense
would fail to be action in the usual sense; but it could still be action in some
genuine though non-standard sense. Thus, these texts need not be read as ev-
idence of the sort of eliminative approach Jolley and other proponents of the
traditional view purport to find in Leibniz.
The texts considered in these last two paragraphs all include some kind
of qualifier which should or at least can be viewed as restricting the scope of
Leibniz’s claims to that action which is real or physical. They allow us to read
him not as denying that monads interact tout court, but as denying only that
they interact in the sense ordinarily in view in metaphysical contexts (i.e., the
‘metaphysically rigorous’ or ‘proper’ sense). It must be admitted, however,
that other texts can be adduced which lack any such qualifier and in which
Leibniz denies that monads interact. For instance, in the Discourse he insists
that ‘each substance is like a world apart, independent of every other thing ex-
cept God; thus all our phenomena, that is to say all things that can ever happen
to us, are only consequences of our being’ (DM 14). In the ‘New System’ es-
say, he confesses to being unable to find any way of ‘explaining how the body
can make something pass over into the soul or vice versa, or how one created
substance can communicate with another’ (G 4:483/AG 142–43/WF 17). And
in the Monadology, he argues that because monads ‘have no windows through
which something can enter or leave’, we cannot explain ‘how a monad can be
altered or changed in its interior by some other creature’ and consequently ‘an
external cause cannot influence its interior’ (M 7, 11). Surely remarks such as
these unequivocally support the traditional reading.
In interpreting these passages and others like them, however, we should
bear two facts in mind. First, such texts are far outnumbered by those state-
51 See also DM 32; T 290, 400.

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 MONADIC INTERACTION

ments in which Leibniz explicitly includes some kind of qualification. Dec-

larations such as ‘I maintain that our spontaneity suffers no exception, and
that external things have no physical influence on us, to speak in philosophical
rigor’ (T 290, my emphasis) are much more common than unqualified claims
like ‘each substance is like a world apart, independent of every other thing ex-
cept God’ (DM 14). Second, and more important, the unqualified statements
tend to occur in contexts in which Leibniz does mention the qualification or in
which he affirms that monads do interact ideally. Thus consider the examples
from the previous paragraph. It is true that in §14 of the Discourse Leibniz says
that substances are ‘independent of every other thing except God’ and that ‘all
things that can ever happen to us are only consequences of our being’. But it
is also true that (i) at the end of this section, he asserts that there is an element
of truth in our judgements to the effect that other things act on us as causes,
and (ii) later in the work, gesturing toward the theory of ideal action sketched
in §15, he claims to have ‘already noted how one can truly say that particular
substances act on one another’ (DM 27). I see no way of reconciling these pas-
sages short of understanding the unqualified remarks in §14 and elsewhere in
the Discourse as implicitly qualified in the way Leibniz often explicitly qualifies
such remarks. The same goes for the ‘New System’ and the Monadology. In the
former Leibniz writes that ‘the action of one substance on another is neither an
emission nor a transplantation of an entity, as the vulgar conceive it, and can
reasonably be taken only in the manner just stated’ (G 4:486/WF 20), and in the
latter he claims that ‘since a created monad cannot have a physical influence on
the interior of another, it is only by this means that the one can have any depen-
dence on the other’ (M 51). Both of these comments, in which Leibniz alludes
to the theory of ideal action he has just sketched, seem to call for reading the
unqualified denials of monadic interaction which appear elsewhere in these
writings as implicitly qualified. In fact, I believe it would be reasonable, in
view of these points, to take all the passages in which Leibniz appears to deny
outright that monads interact as implicitly qualified in this way. His point,
properly understood, is not that created monads cannot causally interact, but
just that they cannot interact by way of a real or physical influence, that is, an
immediate, efficient causal influence.
This survey exhausts the relevant sorts of text which could be cited as evi-
dence of the sort of eliminative approach Jolley claims to find in Leibniz’s writ-
ings. I have argued that, all things considered, they provide little reason for
imputing such an approach to Leibniz and should instead be interpreted only
as rejections of any immediate, efficient causal influence among created mon-
ads. Combine this with the point that the two-approach objection requires us
to see Leibniz as vacillating in a most unlikely way between the reductive and
eliminative approaches, and the result is a rather strong case for dismissing
that objection. I therefore conclude that my argument against the traditional
reading of Leibniz and in favor of my alternative stands.

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5 The Trouble with Divine Accommodation

I want to conclude by reflecting on a complication we encounter in trying to
understand Leibniz’s thesis of divine accommodation. I argued above (§1) that
this thesis plays a central (if not the central) role in his theory of ideal action,
inasmuch as it provides the connection between distinct representation or in-
telligible explanation and activity. My suggestion was that ‘one can truly say
that particular substances act on one another’ (DM 27) precisely because the
substance with a distinct representation of the reason for certain changes has
moved God (via its idea in the divine intellect) to effect changes in other sub-
stances, thus bringing the latter substances into harmony with the former. This
effecting of changes is what Leibniz typically describes as God’s ‘ordering’
[reglant] or ‘accommodating’ [s’accommodant] substances to one another. As my
choice of the expression ‘effect changes’ suggests, I have thus far been taking
such descriptions at face value, that is, literally. When Leibniz says that ‘The
modifications of one monad are the ideal causes of the modifications of other
monads [. . . ] insofar as there appear in one monad reasons which moved God
from the beginning of things to establish modifications in another monad’ (G
2:475/L 608), or that ‘God, comparing two simple substances, finds in each rea-
sons that require him to accommodate the other to it’ (M 52), I have understood
him, naturally enough, to be claiming that God in fact causes the passive sub-
stance to have certain modifications which it otherwise would not have had.
Yet, there are powerful reasons for thinking that this may not be what Leibniz
really had in mind.
In the first place, taking Leibniz’s talk of divine accommodation at face
value introduces serious metaphysical difficulties. An initial concern is that
in arguing against the possibility of any physical influx in the realm of created
substances, Leibniz commits himself to viewing any genuine adaptive activity
on the part of God as unintelligible. He argues in §7 of the Monadology that no
created monad can cause changes to the interior of another, because such in-
fluence would require an inexplicable transmission of either parts or accidents.
There can be no exchange of parts because monads, being by nature simple,
have no parts to give and could not receive the parts of another. Further, there
can be no transposition of accidents: ‘Accidents cannot be detached, nor can
they go about outside of substances, as the sensible species of the Scholastics
once did’ (M 7). Hence, Leibniz concludes that no created monad can make
changes to the interior of another. But then how, we may ask, is God able to
make changes to the interior of substances, as the theory of ideal action seems
to require? He cannot do so through an exchange of parts, since neither God
nor created substances have parts. Nor can there be a transposition of acci-
dents, since according to Leibniz it is impossible for accidents to be detached.
The idea that God adapts substances to one another therefore seems to be just
as unacceptable as the idea that one created substance physically influences
another. Leibniz could of course retort that God can do what creatures cannot;
but saying this does nothing to remove the air of unintelligibility surrounding
the doctrine of divine accommodation. So consistency would seem to require

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Leibniz to say one of two things: either that created substances can have a real
or physical influence on one another after all, in which case the theory of ideal
action becomes otiose, or else that God cannot change a monad’s modifica-
tions, in which case there can be no ideal action as Leibniz conceives it. Either
way the proposal appears doomed.52
One reply available to Leibniz would be to point out that properly speak-
ing, God adapts substances to one another only by making adjustments to his
ideas of them prior to creation (see §1 above). Since these ideas are neither sim-
ple substances nor the modifications of another substance, it is far from clear
that the argument of the Monadology poses any threat to divine accommoda-
tion, understood in this way. Even if making changes to the interior of another
substance requires some sort of physical influx, as Leibniz maintains, it does
not follow that God’s making adjustments to his own ideas requires such an
influx. Clarifying his view in this way thus allows him to deflect the original
objection. But notice that it also introduces even more serious problems. For,
first, it ought to be impossible for God to make changes to his ideas. Leibniz
tells us that these ideas are the essences or natures of possible things.53 As such
they are ‘eternal and necessary’ (T 335). It would therefore seem that God, be-
ing unable to do the impossible, could no more change one of these ideas than
he could make a necessary truth false, a point Leibniz himself exploits to great
advantage in his theodicy.54 Besides this, even if God could make changes to
his ideas, there would be no point in doing so. On Leibniz’s view, all possibil-
ities are represented in the divine intellect; for every possible substance, there
is an idea in the mind of God which corresponds to that and only that possible
substance.55 Hence, to change one possible in some possible way would be
to make it qualitatively identical to some other possible already existing there.
Not only would this give rise to a violation of the identity of indiscernables, but
it would be pointless, since God could have simply chosen the possible which
already had the desired constitution.
In view of these difficulties, we may begin to suspect that Leibniz did not
mean for his talk of divine accommodation to be taken at face value. But there
is more. In some of his descriptions of the process of creation, Leibniz appears
to rule out the possibility of divine accommodation. For instance, he writes to
Jaquelot in late 1704 that ‘it is the nature of things themselves which produces
their sequence prior to every decree, which God just wills to realize in find-
ing this possibility ready-made [toute faite]’. A few lines later, he adds: ‘The
sequence of things of this world was already eternally settled [. . . ] before all
52 Note that this objection differs from the point made by a number of commentators that Leib-

niz’s rejection of real monadic interaction stands in tension with his acceptance of the doctrine that
God creates and conserves monads. Those who make this point appear to overlook the difference
between bringing about a change to the interior of a previously existing substance, and bringing
about the substance itself, which involves no change to its interior. In contrast, my objection is
to the idea of divine accommodation, which as I am interpreting it here differs from creation and
conservation in that it involves making changes to the interior of a substance.
53 See T 7, 20, 335.
54 See, for example, T 335, 380.
55 See T 21, 189; G 6:423/H 428.

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consideration of the decree that realized it, just as the properties of a circle and
of a parabola are thus settled’ (G 6:559–60/WF 188–89). By the ‘sequence’ of
a thing, Leibniz means its progression from one state to the next; his point is
that God finds this progression of a thing ready-made and has no more control
over it than he has over the properties of geometrical figures. In the same vein,
we read at T 52 that in actualizing possibles, God’s decree ‘leaves them just
as they were in the state of pure possibility, that is to say it changes nothing
either in their essence or nature, or even in their accidents, which were already
represented perfectly in the idea of this possible world’.56 Such remarks seem
to leave no room for a process of adapting the ideas of things to one another
prior to actualization.
If Leibniz’s talk about divine accommodation is not to be taken at face
value, however, then how should it be taken? One answer—the only one
for which I have been able to find any textual justification—may be found
at T 54, where Leibniz argues that petitionary prayer and right action can be
efficacious—can be an ‘ideal cause or condition’—because ‘God, foreseeing what
would happen freely, ordered all other things on that basis in advance, or, what
is the same, he chose that possible world in which everything was ordered
in this way’. This comment inspires the thought that divine accommodation
comes to nothing more than God selecting for actualization a possible which
by its nature happens to accord with certain other possibles. From this point
of view, God does not actually adapt possibles, despite what Leibniz’s descrip-
tions nearly always suggest; rather, God selects those possibles which already
have the appropriate natures so that it is as if some initially disharmonious
possibles had been brought into harmony.
This deflationary conception of divine accommodation has the advantage
that it avoids the various objections which plague the more robust concep-
tion suggested by many of Leibniz’s statements. In particular, it introduces
nothing unintelligible not already present in the traditional theistic picture, in-
volves no metaphysical absurdities, and violates none of Leibniz’s principles.
Nonetheless, it may invite the following objection: If it is only as if God adapts
substances to one another, then it is only as if they interact, whereas Leibniz
aspires to identify a sense in which they can truly be said to interact. Given
that this is his goal, only the more robust conception of divine accommodation
will do.
In response, one might claim that even on this deflationary conception cre-
ated substances can influence one another in a way. What I have in mind can
be illustrated with the example in which Jones speaks to Smith. Let us call
Smith’s perception of Jones state S and suppose that S occurs in Smith at time t.
In this case, Leibniz would say that Jones rationally determines God to ‘accom-
modate’ Smith to Jones in the sense that God chooses to create Smith, whose
nature determines him to be in S at t, instead of some other substance which is
not in S at t; Jones so determines God because only a substance in S at t would
accord with Jones, who at t has a rather distinct perception of the reason for
56 Cf. G 6:423–24/H 428–29.

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her speaking. Under these circumstances, Jones could perhaps be viewed as a

partial cause of God’s choice to create Smith; for had Jones not been such as she
is, God would not have selected Smith. But then Jones would also be a partial
cause of Smith’s being in S at t; for Smith could only have been in S at t if he
had been selected for creation. If Jones is at least partially causally responsi-
ble for Smith’s existing, then she is also at least partially causally responsible
for Smith’s being in S at t. So even on the deflationary reading of divine ac-
commodation, one substance can truly be said to have an (ideal) influence on
another.
The possibility of this sort of influence nonetheless does little to advance
Leibniz’s cause. In the first place, if Jones partially causes Smith to be in S
at t by way of partially causing God to select Smith rather than some other
substance, then Jones would equally be a partial cause of every state Smith is
in at any time. Jones partially causes Smith to be in S at t in the sense that had
Jones not determined God to select Smith, Smith would not exist and therefore
would not be in S at t. But in this respect S is no different from any other state
of Smith: had Jones not determined God to select Smith, Smith would not exist
and therefore would never be in any state. Further, on this way of viewing the
matter any substance which contributes to God’s decision to select Smith—any
substance, in other words, which acts ideally on Smith—would for the same
reason be equally responsible for Smith’s being in the various states he is in at
various times, and in particular every such substance would be just as much
a cause of Smith’s being in S at t as Jones would be. Thus, Jones would be
neither uniquely responsible for Smith’s being in S at t (since many substances
would be equally responsible for this), nor responsible specifically for Smith’s
being in S at t (since Jones would be equally responsible for Smith’s being in
any number of other states at various times). In contrast, Leibniz needs Jones
to cause Smith to be in S at t in such a way that (i) Jones is unique among
created substances in this respect and (ii) Jones causes only certain states in
Smith (namely, those states, such as S, of which Jones is intuitively the cause).
This is not to say that on the deflationary reading, Jones can have no unique
causal influence in the world. For she would at least be responsible for there
being a substance in S at t. Had Jones not been constituted as she is, God would
not have chosen to create some substance in S at t (though God could have
selected substances in other states at t and at other times). Further, among pos-
sibles Jones alone would have moved God to select some such substance. So
even on the deflationary reading Jones could have some meaningful influence
on the world. She and she alone would rationally determine God to select for
actualization a substance in S at t. But note that Jones would not have any
significant influence on Smith. Smith’s being in S at t would be the collective
result of many factors: his having a nature which determines him to be in S
at t; God, who creates and conserves Smith; and finally the vastly many pos-
sibles, including the idea of Jones, which collectively determine God to select
Smith for creation. Each of these factors would be in one sense or another a
cause of Smith’s being in S at t. Smith would be in S at t because he exists and
has a nature which determines him to be in S at t; he would exist because God

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creates and conserves him; and God would create and conserve Smith because
the possibles so determined him. As one of these possibles, Jones, or rather
the idea of Jones, would be at best just one among vastly many partial causes
of Smith’s being in S at t. So Jones would have a kind of generic influence on
the world, insofar as she is the cause of there being a substance in S at t, but
she would not have any meaningful, specific influence on Smith or any other
substance. It follows that if Leibniz intends the deflationary conception of di-
vine accommodation, he can indeed claim to have established a sense in which
created monads act externally and make a causal difference in the world. But
he would fall well short of his goal of specifying a sense in which ‘one can truly
say that particular substances act on one another’ (DM 27).
We therefore arrive at the following situation. On either of the ways I have
suggested for interpreting divine accommodation, that thesis is problematic.
Taken at face value, it introduces deep difficulties. But read in the deflationary
fashion, it largely fails to perform its intended function. Since these interpre-
tations appear to exhaust the possibilities, it follows that the theory of ideal
action, in which divine accommodation plays an essential role, is either well-
suited to perform its intended function but metaphysically problematic, or else
metaphysically innocuous but ill-suited to perform its function. In either case,
it seems we must conclude that the theory fails to secure the result Leibniz
claims for it. Though the evidence presented above makes it hard to deny that
he considers created monads capable of genuine causal interaction, this does
not appear to be a position to which he is entitled given his commitment to
certain views concerning the metaphysics of creation.57

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57 Versions of this paper were read at the Oxford Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy in October

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