PREFORMARE E PRESTABILIRE L’ARMONIA DELLA CITTÀ FELICE TRAMITE IL MECCANISMO A SCATTO DELL’ESISTENZA. ORGANISMO, UNIONE DI ANIMA E CORPO, E UNIVERSO VIVENTE IN G.W. LEIBNIZ

Abstract

The living organism is, with the soul that supports it, the focal point of Leibniz’s thought; as a place of conjunction between matter and substantial form it is the nexus between matter, form/substance and God. Inspired by the technological innovations of his time, the philosopher from Hanover studies the organism in the form of a mechanism: clocks, weaving machines or mechanisms of another kind, based on the deterministic movements of gears, appeared then in Europe. The snap movement that characterizes the functioning of the machines determines also the coming into existence of the universe, shapes the proof of the existence of God and gives shape to the natural becoming. The organism, as a machine produced by the divine artifice, testifies to the supreme knowledge of the creator: only God, as omniscient, is capable of creating it. Leibniz’s goal is always the community: nature itself, like any organism, is a city-state whose true formal atoms are monads, that is, souls, placed in a rigid hierarchy according to their degree of perfection. God and the community express a specific extreme finalism, which is represented by the other great principle of Leibniz’s philosophy: the principle of happiness.