preestablished harmony

American  

noun

1. (in the philosophy of Leibnitz) synchronous operation of all monads, since their simultaneous creation, in accordance with the preexisting plan of God.

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Etymology

Origin of preestablished harmony

First recorded in 1720–30

Example Sentences

It was necessary to take the roundabout way through occasionalism and the preëstablished harmony, including the latter's retreat to the omnipotence of God, before it was possible to miss the question of the validity of the presupposition that the connection between cause and effect is analytic and rational.

From Project Gutenberg

What was his famous Principle of the Sufficient Reason, the very corner stone of his philosophy, from which the Preestablished Harmony, the doctrine of Monads, and all the opinions most characteristic of Leibnitz, were corollaries?

From Project Gutenberg

His polemic, which is inspired throughout with the spirit of Locke, is directed against the innate ideas of the Cartesians, Malebranche’s faculty—psychology, Leibnitz’s monadism and preestablished harmony, and, above all, against the conception of substance set forth in the first part of the Ethics of Spinoza.

From Project Gutenberg

After all, he has felt constrained to have recourse to the hypothesis of a preëstablished harmony in order to restore, if possible, the liberty which his scheme of necessity had banished from the universe.

From Project Gutenberg

Thus arose his celebrated, but now obsolete fiction, of a preëstablished harmony.

From Project Gutenberg