FURTHER ON LEIBNIZ’S CHARACTERISTICA UNIVERSALIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7443/problemata.v17i3.81880Keywords:
symbolic language, natural language, linguistic turn, qualityAbstract
This study aims to present a comprehensive bibliographic overview of the Leibnizian concept of the characteristica universalis: (1) its “twisted roots” and its subsequent influence on the formation of analytical philosophy, extending even to contemporary developments in generative artificial intelligence; (2) the critique this concept faced as early as mid-18th century — notably through the “Spinozist” deviations of Herder, with his “linguistic turn” and the notion of natural language as a “window without a monad”, and Goethe, who refuted the preformationist hypothesis and discovered the concept of reproduction as anastomosis, or relacion; and, finally, (3) the role of this “Spinozist” critique of the characteristica universalis in the formulation of Hegel’s Science of Logic as a critique of the autonomy and substantiality attributed to quantity and symbolic languages. Running throughout this trajectory we find the Baconian primacy of quality, synthesis, and the a posteriori; which was subsequently inverted by the mechanistic ideas that posit the substantiality of quantity, at least until the Leibnizian inflection point, where quantity and quality, analysis and synthesis appear to be in a reciprocal relationship — albeit marked by a clear ideological preponderance of quantity and analysis; which was later reclaimed and reformulated by the “Spinozism” found in the German naturalism of Herder and Goethe; and ultimately elevated by Hegel into a fundamental concept within his Logic, Nature and Spirit.
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