Abstract

Repetition in the strict sense of the word, which for Leibniz can only be the product of a finite description, does not know empirical reality at all, since beneath the descriptive level 'discrimina imperceptibilia' always exist that violate the assumption of eternal recurrence of the same. Thus Leibniz comes to the understanding - for speculative reasons, since the total development of the world cannot be the subject of possible experience - that the whole cosmic occurrence follows a course of progress to infinity. - The universal characteristic of progress is now however not amelioration but the variation creating innovation - the transition to the new. Therefore also the world in its restless progress must not become successively better ; it suffices if it is in its course constantly the same but in changeable form complete - two hypotheses with which Leibniz repeatedly operates and which he also advances for the progress of human happiness