Filosofia e Teologia XXXIX, 2 (2025), Deus ex machina. Intelligenza naturale e intelligenza artificiale, pp. 305-320
The Relation between Memory and the Divine Architecture of Substances: A Proposal for a Tripartite Ontology in Leibniz’s Philosophy
The paper explores the function of memory in Leibniz’s philosophy and argues that memory is a key criterion for classifying substances within his ontology. Throughout his writings, Leibniz introduces various kinds of memory, corresponding to different degrees of self-sufficiency. On this basis, the paper proposes a tripartite classification of created entities in Leibniz’s universe: (1) those possessing a primary perceptive capacity but lacking active recollection, which merely accumulate and retain traces of events and things; (2) those endowed with a basic «apperceptive» capacity, enabling a form of triggered recollection, dependent on the reappearance of objects associated with past events; (3) those substances capable of both réminiscence ̶ that is, of autonomous remembrance ̶ and souvenir, which is the ability to attribute memories to a self that recognizes them as its own: in other words, to recognize oneself as a center of continuous perception and memory.
Keywords: Leibniz, Substantiality, Consciousness, Unconscious, Cognitive Psychology, Animal Memory