Abstract

An authoritative interpretative trend, inspired by the phenomenological reading of Leibniz in the light of Husserlian idealism, presents his epistemology as resting ultimately on the thesis of a pre-symbolical “intuition” of thought-contents. However fruitful the symbolic apparatus, however complex the theory elaborated, the validity of this theory would depend on the fundamental, non-verbal, experience that its first notions are possible. The textual basis invoked to support this interpretation consists, on the one hand, of Book IV, Chapter 2, § 1 of the New Essays on Human Understanding, where Leibniz does develop a detailed theory of what is known to us by intuition; on the other, of the Meditations on Cognition, Truth and Ideas, composed twenty years before: this opuscule, constantly referred to by Leibniz, would contain the canonical definition of intuitive knowledge. Against this reading, my contention is twofold : first, the terms cognitio intuitiva and intuition do not have the same meaning in 1684 and in the New Essays. Second, neither of those meanings justifies the attribution to Leibniz of such a conception of the foundation of knowledge. Even if there is a Leibnizian realism of ideas, he was at pains, throughout his life, to bar any intuitive “way to ideas”.