In What Sense Is There Parallelism in Leibniz?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show that by “parallelism”, Leibniz meant something different from what is usually termed, since Fechner, “psychophysical parallelism”. Besides the fact that very few occurrences of the term “parallelism” are to be found in the Leibnizian corpus, the notion is only explicitly related to pre-established harmony between soul and body in the Leibniz-Stahl controversy. Rather than envisaging a “metaphysical” parallelism opposing soul to body as two heterogeneous entities, Leibniz conceived of a symbolic relation between the two and upheld a “methodological” parallelism that implied that, in explaining phenomena, one should not confuse efficient with final causes, nor the realm of Nature with that of Grace, while sustaining their exact concordance and convergence.