The Unity of Composite Substance: The Scholastic Background to the Vinculum Substantiale in Leibniz’s Correspondence with Des Bosses

This paper explores the scholastic context of the discussion about the unity of the composite or corporeal substance and the nature of the vinculum substantiale or substantial bond in Leibniz’s correspondence with Des Bosses. Three prominent scholastic views are examined: Duns Scotus’s antireductionist account of the composite substance as an entity irreducible to its essential parts (i.e., matter and substantial form); Ockham’s parts-whole identity thesis, which entails a reductionist view of the composite substance; and Suárez’s explanation of the unity of composite substance through the presence of a substantial mode of union. It is then shown that Leibniz initially combines a reductionist account of the composite substance, with the vinculum playing the role of bond among the component monads. In his last letters, he moves away from this to an antireductionist account of the composite substance, with which he now identifies the vinculum.

‘Strike a pose’: Fabricating posthumous presence in mannequin design

Interviewed in 2004, designer duo Viktor and Rolf outlined their ambivalence towards fashion exhibitions suggesting that ‘somehow life is taken out of the subject’ (2008, cited in Teunissen, ‘Understanding Fashion through the Museum in Melchior, MR, 2014). Garments seeking spectator attention within the museum space are often perceived as static entities devoid of their original function as embodied artefacts. There is no denying an inert aura pervades listless materials that have supposedly lost their agency, now confined to the vaults of the museum-as-mausoleum. In their re-purposed role of performing as reminders of a life now departed, this article considers curatorial strategies that seek to revive a living presence in garment display with specific reference to the remodelling of Frida Kahlo in the V&A exhibition ‘Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up (2018)’. Addressing Dudley’s suggestion in Museum Objects: Experiencing the Properties of Things (2012: 19) that an artefact’s ‘fundamental material characteristics’ should be at the heart of contextual interpretation, the role that an object’s material properties can play in the re-materializing of embodiment is evaluated. In the V&A exhibition, a narrative emerges on clothing as an agent that conceals vulnerable corporeality. Sartorial practices armoured Kahlo’s body and the role material entities can play in containing and preserving the illusion of corporeal substance will be investigated. Given this premise, it seems wholly appropriate to focus on the contribution that the mannequin can make to this conceptual framework. After all, it is an artefact with a central occupation of establishing bodily integrity in the display of clothing. Reiterating Clark’s suggestion in The Textile Reader (2012) that the mannequin contributes to the vocabulary of a curatorial brief, this article proposes that this artefact can interrogate the tensions that exist between Kahlo’s sartorial practices and her abject body. Substantiating Appadurai’s premise of material objects’ agency in The Social Life of Things (2001[1986]), the exhibition arguably employs the once humble tailor’s dummy in a significant role, thereby reconstructing its dominant function of embodying fabric in the museum.

Monads at the Bottom, Monads at the Top, Monads All Over

This chapter contests a widely accepted reading of the role monads play as the most fundamental elements of reality. Garber (2009) argues that simple monads—seen as mindlike atoms without parts and extension—replace the corporeal substance of Leibniz’s middle period. The author argues that, for Leibniz, monads function not only as building blocks at the bottom level of composition (for aggregates) but also at the top as grounding the unity, and hence the being of complete substances and organic unities. Since Leibniz sees organic unities as natural machines with a nested structure that develops ad infinitum, and since he likens monads to living beings, this would imply that the use of the concept “monad” holds not only at the bottom and not only at the top but also in the entire range in between.

Passive Force and Corporeal Substance

This chapter treats various issues concerning Leibniz’s accounts of force and of corporeal substance: the status of passive force, given that substance is a thing that acts, how extension is founded in force, and the issue of substantial bonds. It is argued that Leibniz’s position is that an entelechy can never act in isolation: its action must always take into consideration the actions of the other created substances with which it coexists. Extension arises from the resistance to penetration resulting from the diffusion of entelechies and passive forces throughout matter, while the unity and continuity of body is relative to the observer. Leibniz does not propose substantial bonds out of dissatisfaction with this standard account, but in an attempt to satisfy the Jesuits’ demand for the real union of body and soul, which ultimately conflicts with the actuality of subordinate forms implicit in his own position.

Body and Corporeal Substance

This chapter discusses Leibniz’s conception of body and the closely related concept of corporeal substance. Leibniz saw problems with Descartes’s and Hobbes’s view and introduced a new conception of body based on a metaphysical argument that multiplicity presupposes unities, leading Leibniz to the view that extended bodies are made up of corporeal substances, genuine unities on the model of living animals, and a physical argument that the proper laws of nature require forces, active and passive in bodies; thus, that extended bodies are to be understood in terms of corporeal substances considered as unities of form (active force) and matter (passive force). The chapter traces the development of this view of body as Leibniz introduces monads as metaphysically more fundamental than corporeal substances and struggles to integrate them into the world of nonextended monads.

Monads

This chapter discusses the final development of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s metaphysics: the theory of monads. It examines Leibniz’s arguments for monads as mindlike “simple substances,” his description of the properties of monads, and the distinction he draws among different types of monads. The remainder of the article focuses on two problems that attend Leibniz’s claim that reality ultimately consists solely of monads and their internal states (perceptions and appetitions). The first problem is whether a relation among monads can account for the supposed unity of a living body or corporeal substance; the second is whether the metaphysics of monads supports a plausible explanation of the reality of matter. With regard to the second problem, the chapter explores Leibniz’s thesis that monads are, in two senses, “requisites” of matter. It concludes with reflections on the limits of his attempt to explain the physical world in terms of monads alone.