This paper concerns the distinction between imagination and reason in Leibniz’s epistemology and metaphysics, a major point that remains poorly documented. Rather than opposing the two, as was often the case during the seventeenth century, Leibniz’s theory enables us to explain how both faculties complement each other. This is particularly clear for empirical knowledge, but also in mathematics, a discipline which Leibniz often referred to as the logic of imagination. This paper also demonstrates how important principles of Leibnizian metaphysics require (...) us to discard imagination as a source of knowledge, a point that is well illustrated in the critique of Hartsoeker’s atomism. (shrink)

According to Leibniz's late metaphysics, sensory perception represents to us as extended, colored, textured, etc., a world which fundamentally consists only of non-spatial, colorless entities, the monads. It is a short step from here to the conclusion that sensory perception radically misleads us about the true nature of reality. In this paper, I argue that this oft-repeated claim is false. Leibniz holds that in typical cases of body perception the bodies perceived really exist and have the qualities, both primary and (...) secondary, they are perceived to have. At the same time, Leibniz holds that our perceptions of these bodies are accurate representations of the monads from which the bodies result. The contrary thesis — that our body perceptions are misrepresentations of the monads — stems from a misunderstanding of Leibniz's theory of confused concepts and his phenomenalist account of the nature of body. Clarifying these issues will have important consequences for our understanding of Leibniz's idealistic metaphysics and the manner in which that metaphysical theory is meant to support mechanistic science. (shrink)