Questions on Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics

1. Why must every substance express "in its own way" the entire universe?<p>

2. Why is the concept of substantial form a better way to explain what constitutes a body than an account (like Descartes') that focuses on size, shape, and motion?<p>

3. How can a proposition (e.g., Caesar will cross the Rubicon) be certain and yet not be necessary?<p>

4. How can our perceptions always be true and yet our judgments often deceive us?<p>

5. Why can't one particular substance ever act on, or be acted on by, another substance?<p>

6. Why can't truth depend on arbitrarily defined (i.e., "supposited") names--as, for example, Hobbes says?<p>

7. How can Leibniz say that all our ideas are due to God's continual action and yet claim that I think by means of my own ideas, not God's?<p>

8. How can Judas be said to acted freely if for all eternity God knew that Judas would act in a certain way in virtue of God’s having created this particular universe?<p>

9. How are bodies differentiated from souls in how they "express" the universe?