Leibniz on Hobbes’s materialism

This paper discusses Leibniz’s interpretation and criticism of Hobbesian materialism in the period 1698–1705. Leibniz had continued to be interested in Hobbes’s work, despite not engaging with it as intensively as he did earlier (around 1670). Leibniz offers an interpretation of Hobbes that explains Hobbes’s materialism as derived from his imagistic theory of ideas. Leibniz then criticizes Hobbes’s view as being based on a faulty theory of ideas, and as having problematic consequences, particularly with regard to what one says about God. Some of this criticism is found in the New essays, but equally significant is Leibniz’s correspondence with Damaris Masham, who proposed an argument for materialism very much like that which Leibniz attributed to Hobbes. The paper concludes by discussing the suggestion that Leibniz at this time, particularly in the New essays, himself adopted Hobbesian ideas. Though Leibniz did use some of Hobbes’s examples, and did think at this time that all souls were associated with bodies, the resulting position is still rather distant from Hobbesian materialism.