Leibniz on substance and Change: Between aristotle and Locke. A Commentary on On Changes

The Latin draft I present and discuss here (LH IV 7C 85-86)—while being still unpublished in the Akademie edition—has circulated among Leibniz scholars in different forms: a transcription (by N. Öffenberger) was included in the Vorausedition to volume VI.4, but it was excluded from the published volume because the piece was (correctly) dated beyond its chronological limits.1 Not only the material data but also thematic affinities confirm the attribution of this draft to around 1705, the period of the composition of the New Essays. As a matter of fact, in this text traces of a close confrontation with Locke’s Essay2—and in particular with one of its most well-known and controversial parts, chapter 27 of Book 2 (an addition to the second edition of Locke’s masterpiece), devoted to the problems of identity—are intertwined with logical-ontological topics that recur in Leibniz’s reflections, such as the structure of predication and the semantics of abstract terms. The result is an extraordinarily rich, multi-layered analysis, which presents us with one of Leibniz’s most intensive discussions of topics—essentialism and identity— lying at the heart of his metaphysics as well as of present-day metaphysical debate.