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Human beings are never at rest, not even in sleep, according to Gottfried Leibniz. We are constantly bombarded by small perceptions, most of which we are unaware of, which incline us to certain actions. Because our nature wants to be more at ease, these small perceptions give rise to small impulses to overcome small obstacles. This overcoming gives us small joys, which can translate into a larger happiness if we use our experience and our reason to guide us in deciding which small impulses to allow and which to forbid.
Perception and Apperception
Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding employs the device of dialogue between two fictitious characters, Philalethes, who represents John Locke, and Theophilus, who represents Leibniz,[1] to argue against Locke’s position. Leibniz asserts, contrary to Locke, that in any substance, there is always activity and hence movement. Leibniz distinguishes between perception and apperception, where perceptions are what we perceive “unaccompanied by awareness or reflection,”[2] while apperceptions are perceptions of which we are aware of. For instance, we are mostly not conscious of our breathing or our hearts beating if we do not pay attention to these activities. This is because we take these activities for granted in their occurrence – they are “too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying.”[3] They lack “novelty”[4] and so do not draw our attention, like the way the hum of an electric fan fades into the background and is perceived but not apperceived by us.
He further explains that for perceptions that we do notice, their intensities are a combination of the many small perceptions that compose them. An explosion of a barrel of gunpowder is loud, but it did not get from quiet to its high volume instantaneously. The individual grains of gunpowder each make a small sound when burnt and collectively, these small sounds add up, culminating in what seems like a single loud sound. This process happens so rapidly that it appears as one loud sound but if the explosion had been recorded and replayed in (extremely) slow motion, the viewer will see and hear that it is in fact many small explosions causing many small sounds to form one large sound. “Nothing takes place suddenly […] nature never makes leaps,” according to Leibniz, who terms this the “Law of Continuity.”[5]
From Small Perceptions to Happiness
Leibniz links these minute perceptions to our actions, writing that these small perceptions “determine our behaviour in many situations without our thinking of them.”[6] He explains that all our involuntary actions, and even some voluntary actions such as our customs and passions, result from a “conjunction of minute perceptions,” where these “tendencies come into being gradually”[7] in keeping with the Law of Continuity. However, he is not asserting that our actions hence are necessary ones but that they are caused by these small perceptions to “incline,” a particular way, that these small perceptions “tilt the balance [of the choice of action] without necessitating [them].”[8]
This is because our minds are able to command our thoughts, to stop or explore particular trajectories, in accordance to our “temperaments and […] powers of self-control.”[9] Leibniz explains that our nature is always striving to be more “at ease,”[10] so our small perceptions lead us to have “minute impulses [that] consist in our continually overcoming small obstacles.”[11] Our nature continues this struggle constantly without our apperceiving these small perceptions and impulses, “drawing [us] closer to the good […] or reducing the feeling of suffering.”[12]
He contends that this continual struggle gives pleasure, indeed more pleasure than achieving the good itself. He believes that we need this “continual and uninterrupted progress towards greater goods”[13] for our happiness rather than the complete achievement of happiness that rationalists such as Locke and utilitarians such as Bentham consider as our goal. Leibniz thinks that if we managed to achieve complete happiness, we would be left “insensate and stupefied,”[14] like a person who has lost all sense of purpose now that everything has been attained and no more striving is required. However, Leibniz regards these minute impulses as first steps towards happiness. Because they are focused on the present, these impulses can give us joy which is a short-term feeling, but not happiness which is a long-term feeling. To achieve happiness, we need to use “experience and reason”[15] to control these impulses. Sometimes, we have to forgo short-term joys so as to achieve longer term fulfilment. Experience and reason can serve as our guide towards such fulfilment or happiness, so that we can ultimately be “filled with rational joy and enlightened pleasure.”[16]
Conclusion
Leibniz’s account of small perceptions lines up well with a modern scientific understanding of how we make sense of the massive amount of information continually bombarding our senses and the operation of our automatic bodily functions. For instance, when we look at our mobile phones, our attention is focused on its screen, even as we perceive the other people or objects around us. We also do not have to think or even be aware (mostly) to keep breathing, blinking or swallowing, as perception is sufficient to keep these bodily mechanisms operating automatically. If we must apperceive these operations in order to keep them going, our mental capacity will be severely strained, leaving us little bandwidth for higher order thinking.
However, Leibniz’s theory linking the minute impulses resulting from the small perceptions to the pursuit of happiness is incomplete. Overcoming the small obstacles may indeed give some pleasure, but we are surely more than beings that are propelled completely by such small impulses. While Leibniz is right in believing we have to control these small impulses, that is only the basic part of what needs to be done. We also have to actively pursue our goals, which arise not because of the small perceptions but from our will, supported by our imagination to formulate goals that go beyond what the small perceptions can possibly amount to. Leibniz’s theory from the passages examined, if we ignore his belief in divine predestination, seem to belittle the power of the human spirit vis-à-vis the will to formulate and then pursue our goals.
Bibliography
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Understanding. Edited by Jonathan Bennett. Translated by Peter Remnant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Look, Brandon C. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2020. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/leibniz/.
Photo by Kawin Harasai on Unsplash
[1] Brandon C. Look, “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Spring 2020 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/leibniz/.
[2] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, ed. Jonathan Bennett, trans. Peter Remnant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 53.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 54.
[5] Ibid., 56.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid., 116.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 177.
[10] Ibid., 188.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., 189.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Leibniz, 190.
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