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The main problem of Leibniz's metaphysics and logic is that of an absolute founding on the principle of sufficient reason. To meet this need, "there must always be some foundation of the connection of the terms of a proposition, which must be found in their notion"¹. In this way Leibniz expresses the "logicistic" (so to speak) formula of the principle of reason; the formula is further, and differently, spelled out as follows: "my great principle, one with which I believe all philosophers should be in agreement, and one of whose corollaries is the vulgar axiom that nothing happens without reason, [is that] whereby one can alway saccount for why something has happened this way rather than in some other way."² The place of reason, of what Leibniz calls ratio, raison, Grund, seems to be both in logic and in ontology. Reason, or also the foundation, as the same word (Grund) is used for both, belongs to the complete idea of a subject and thus to the logical-propositional sphere, but also to the structure of things, of which it is, indeed, aprimary constituent, and therefore to the realm of being. Leibniz never felt compelled to justify this duplicity, nor was it a topic of much debate with his correspondents.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-9032-7_1

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