These are striking words. Read in isolation from his other remarks on the esoteric/exoteric distinction, one might take this text to suggest Russell’s thesis that Leibniz had two distinct philosophies — a false philosophy suitable for presentation to the public, and his true philosophy, which he only revealed to a few trusted correspondents. But Leibniz’s claim is not quite as radical as it might initially seem. His point is that it is often useless and harmful to straightforwardly present the content of his metaphysics to the public (and even to many of his correspondents). As he explains to Charles Hugony several years later, “some of my views cannot be presented in a straightforward manner [ne peut donner cruement], since people are liable to misunderstand them, not in relation to religion, which is strongly supported, but in relation to the senses” (6 November 1710, G 3:680). Similarly, in a letter to Simon Foucher from the late 1680’s, Leibniz notes that some of the core concepts of metaphysics are those of “cause, effect, change, action, time, where I find that the truth is very different from what one imagines” (G 1:391). After setting forth several of his more controversial views he cautions Foucher as follows: “it is not appropriate for these sorts of considerations to be seen by everyone, and the vulgar would not be able to understand it at all before having the mind prepared” (G 1:392, emphasis added). All of these texts converge on the same basic problem. It has nothing to do with the esoteric mode of presentation per se. It is the esoteric content of Leibniz’s metaphysics — its purely intelligible concepts and principles — that make it susceptible to being seriously misunderstood. This is The Problem of Esoteric Philosophy.
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