Abstract

This article explores the grounds which Leibniz might have offered for his theory that all truths are analytic, by considering the reasons his predecessors seem to have had for advancing similar formulas. I take Descartes and Spinoza to be the predecessors who came closest to Leibniz's theory. In spite of Leibniz's own indications to the contrary, his theory seems to be fundamentally opposed to Aristotelian theories of truth. I suggest that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were inclined toward this kind of theory largely because they needed a theory which would explain how a sentence might be true even if it was about things which do not exist, as mathematical truths sometimes are