Animals in G. W. Leibniz's metaphysics: ontological status, gnosiological aspects and ethical perspectives in the optics of modern receptions

Sergienko Aleksey Yurievich Postgraduate student; Stasis Center for Practical Philosophy; European University at St. Petersburg 6/1 Gagarinskaya str., A, Saint Petersburg, 191187 asergienko@eu.spb.ru Other publications by this author

Gluhovskii Andrei Sergeevich ORCID: 0000-0003-0052-0180 Lecturer; Institute for International Development and Partnership; ITMO University Postgraduate student; Stasis Center for Practical Philosophy; European University in St. Petersburg 197101, Russia, St. Petersburg, Petrogradsky district, Kronverksky ave., 49 glukhovsky.andrew@gmail.com

Introduction

In 2024, at the New York conference "The New Science of Animal Consciousness" (eng. The Emerging Science of Animal Consciousness) A number of leading experts in the field of neurobiological sciences, psychology, zoology and philosophy have signed a collective declaration according to which invertebrates and insects, as well as animals with developed nervous systems, are recognized as carriers of phenomenal consciousness. Recognition of consciousness in animals means that they have a subjective nature of experience and conscious mental states, which requires a person not only to develop an appropriate ethical theory, but also socially motivated respect for the complex behavioral needs of living organisms. Scientists hope that the declaration will encourage the scientific community to "discuss, serve as the basis for policy and practice in the field of animal protection and encourage understanding and recognition that we have much more in common with other animals than with things like ChatGPT" ^[1].

For most modern researchers of philosophy, this news will not seem surprising. Philosophers have been wondering since ancient times whether animals have consciousness, mind, or soul. For example, one can recall Plutarch's most ancient treatise "Grill, or that animals have intelligence" or the "Experiments" of the French philosopher Michel Montaigne. In other words, animal philosophy is a topic, whether explicitly or not, that is present in the reflection of most philosophers. In this article, we turn to the problem of animals in classical metaphysics of Modern times in order to consider the relevance of some aspects of Gottfried W. Leibniz's philosophy of animals in the light of relevant concepts of his views, which open the way to the conceptual development of modern critical approaches to the ontology, cognition and ethics of animals as non-human subjects.

The question of the status of animals in classical metaphysics has traditionally been solved through their opposition to humans. For example, in the dualistic system of Rene Descartes, the human mind acts as the "measure of things" and the universal criterion for knowing the truth, while the animal is reduced to the threshold of mechanical reactions. Thus, classical metaphysics, from Aristotle and Stoicism in antiquity to B. Spinoza and G. W. Leibniz in Modern times, relies on an anthropological distinction, where animal life is the antithesis of the abilities of the human soul. However, new data in the fields of cognitive research, ethology, perceptual psychology, and posthumanistic philosophy provide tools for revising and "devaluing" the anthropocentric factor in classical texts and call into question the universality of the dichotomy of man and animal, body and consciousness, rational and sensual.

Is it possible to rethink the place of animals in metaphysics without falling into either physicalist automatism or naive vitalism? This question can be addressed to the post-Cartesian metaphysics of Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz's idea of animals as "corporeal substances" with a soul offers an alternative to the strict dualism of soul and body, and modern receptions of the ontological and epistemological aspects of his metaphysical teaching allow us to rethink the status of animal-human differences. The purpose of this article is to explore the place given to animals and their abilities in Leibniz's metaphysics according to classical and modern interpretations. We aim to show that the Leibnizian concept of "bodily substances" and "small perceptions" opens the way to an alternative understanding of animal consciousness and subjectivity. The object of the research is the philosophical concepts of animals in the works of R. Descartes, G. Leibniz, and their modern interpreters (J. Simondon, J. Deleuze). The subject of the study is the ontological status of animals (as "bodily substances" in Leibniz), their ability to apperception and reflection, as well as the ethical explications of these concepts.

The key problem is formulated based on the concept of the "anthropological machine" (D. Agamben) and consists in the traditional exclusion of animals from the sphere of reason and subjectivity in Western metaphysics. Descartes' dualistic system, in which the animal is reduced to a "physical automaton," creates a stable anthropocentric paradigm of humanism. Modern interpretations of the post-Cartesian aspects of Leibniz's philosophy offer a unique way to solve this problem.

The methodological basis of the article includes: a historical and philosophical analysis of the works of R. Descartes ("Discourse on Method", "Principles of Philosophy", "Passions of the Soul") and G. Leibniz ("New Experiments on human Understanding", "Monadology"), a comparative analysis of classical (N. Sretensky, P. Popov, G. Mayorov, I. Narsky, V. Sokolov, M. Kulstad, M. Miles) and modern interpretations of Leibniz's philosophy (G. Hanz and K. Wilson, J. Simondon, J. Deleuze), conceptual analysis of concepts in the optics of critical animal research (anthropological machine, animal as automaton, animal as soul, animal as monad).

The novelty of the research lies in the original reading of Leibnizian philosophy from the point of view of animal psychology and the "animal" aspect of monadology. In particular, the final part of the study focuses on the "animal monad" as a posthumanistic perspective in Leibnizian teaching, reflecting alternative ways of human interrelationships of body and soul, mind and senses, subject and world. This opens up new possibilities for philosophical interpretation of modern problems of consciousness and environmental ethics. The relevance of the work is related to modern discussions about the philosophical status of animals, their ability to think, cognition and form connections in the surrounding reality, which are reflected in the works of D. Haraway, R. Braidotti, B. Massumi, M. Berkoff, F. Ferrando and other scientists in the field of critical animal studies and posthumanistic theory.

1. The problem of Descartes' dualistic system: a "physical automaton" inside the anthropological machine of humanism

In the philosophy of Rene Descartes, an animal is reduced to a physical automaton, devoid not only of reason, but also of a soul as a mental phenomenon. In his "Discourse on Method" (1637) Descartes asserts that animals "have no mind", and nature in them acts "according to the arrangement of their organs" ^{[2, p. 284]}. A mole digs holes, and digging the earth by pushing it out is the very existence of a mole body. Spiders weave webs, their structure is such that they live on a web and catch insects with it. Their life can be called expedient because they are adapted to the environment, but it lacks the universal dimension that reason gives a person. Descartes' argument is that the presence of intelligence would allow animal species to develop much faster and more skillfully in the conditions of nature than a person who experiences more physiological difficulties when interacting with the environment. However, the most important factor of development — the ability to reflect — in animals, as Descartes believed, we do not observe. On the contrary, reliance on reflection allows a person to rationally transform the world according to his will and the goals of reason.

From Descartes' dualistic ideas, detailed in the Principles of Philosophy (1641) as a fundamental difference between a thinking thing (Lat. res cogitans) and extended things (lat. res extensa), it follows that if an animal is only a complex mechanism, subjective sensations are inaccessible to it, which means it is not able to experience them, but only passively experience them. An animal is nothing more than a body adapted to a certain task of nature, just as a shovel is designed for digging up the earth, and a spinning machine is designed for weaving. "Our nature has nothing to do with any length or any figure., <...> being a property of the body," Descartes writes further, "thinking alone is involved in it," and only with its help can we obtain clear and distinct ideas about things and phenomena ^{[3, p. 316]}. Therefore, an inert body as an extended matter can only be an object of experiential cognition (let's pay attention to the etymology of the word "experience" — from "to torture", "to experience"). Of course, it would be unfair to turn Descartes into the "Grand Inquisitor" of animals. In this case, we should rather talk about "Cartesianism" as a system in its dualistic and mechanistic aspects. In his Reply to the Sixth Objection (1641) Descartes himself admits: "I do not at all deny in animals what is usually called life, i.e. a bodily soul and an organic feeling" ^{[4, p. 313]}. This means that, despite the "unnaturalness" of the human body to the nature of a rational soul, Descartes agrees that any organic bodies have something in common that can be induced from the very properties of extended matter.

Descartes' research on the "automatism" of physical bodies had a direct impact on the development of animal sciences: biopsychology and ethology, which subsequently, contrary to Cartesian logic itself, led to a critical rethinking of the mental life of animals and the solution of the ethical and anthropological problems associated with it. In lectures on the work of the cerebral hemispheres, Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov pointed out that Descartes' strict mechanicism and ideas about the "bodily soul" provided the natural scientific foundations for the physiology of higher nervous activity and, de facto, proposed the first version of the reflex theory ^{[5, p. 18]}. In the absence of accurate empirical data, Descartes' understanding of the reflex process retained the mystical trace of late antiquity's ideas about the "spirit" (Latin. pneuma) as a life force. Descartes believed that bodily automatism is aroused by "animal spirits" (Latin esprits animaux). In The Passions of the Soul (1649), we read that the function of animal spirits is to organize the nervous activity of the body: to transmit signals from the sensory organs to the brain, to provide reflex reactions without the participation of consciousness, to stimulate emotions and passions. Formally, the combined activity of "animal spirits" could be compared not so much with reflex behavior as with the action of chemical neurotransmitters. Descartes himself gives a poetic description of "spirits" as "a very gentle wind", also acknowledging that their "bodily origin" remains unknown ^{[6, p. 485]}.

Animal spirits remained an obscure idea in Descartes' philosophy, "obscuring" the relationship between body and consciousness^[1]. The development of psychology as a science in the 20th century required clarification: in nervous activity, it is necessary to distinguish between the action of reflex and the action of instinct. If the first one determines the well—coordinated work of certain organs in connection with a physical reaction to an external stimulus, then instinct is the behavior of the entire organic body, the special manner of its existence in the environment. For example, Pavlov, following Cartesian intuitions, believed that instinct, like reflex, is a strictly determined locomotor program "a natural reaction of the body to certain agents." ^{[5, p. 26]}.

The French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, in lectures on psychology, argues that for Descartes himself it is impossible to understand instinct psychologically, the vital activity of his "physical automaton" is explained solely by the mechanics of the body: "Automatism in his theory has nothing to do with intelligence or with acquired, formed habits.": this is the automatism of matter" ^{[8, p. 108]}. It would be correct to clarify that Descartes does not deny thinking in animals, he only states (for example, in correspondence with Henry Mohr) that this cannot be proved or refuted: "The human mind cannot penetrate into the nature of animals in order to understand what is happening inside them" ^{[8, p. 110]}. This is a key conclusion from Cartesian theory, since an animal is deprived of any inner content, and mutual understanding and social aspects of animal-human relations become simply impossible.

The Cartesian approach can be problematized through the concept of the "anthropological machine" by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, which describes the production of the "human" through the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of the "animal". As Agamben writes in his work "Open", Western metaphysics from antiquity to Modern times constructs the exclusivity of human life through "incessant divisions and caesures" with the world of non-human beings ^{[9, p. 22]}. An example of an anthropological machine of "antiquity" is Aristotle's treatise "On the Soul", where such a division works through a mechanism of functional inclusion, subordinating the "vegetable" and "animal" souls to the metaphysical hierarchy of the human soul. On these grounds, it becomes difficult to explain the complexity of animal behavior and to make a qualitative distinction with the mental activity of the rational human soul. Descartes' dualistic system is the first example of the anthropological machine of modernity, for which, on the contrary, the human ability to think becomes an insurmountable boundary between man and animal. Since the boundary is of universal importance for Descartes' dualistic system, inasmuch as it separates the life of the body and the activity of consciousness, it also excludes the codependent connection of man with the natural world. In this way, the anthropological machine constructs humanism in itself, "revealing the absence of its own nature in Homo and placing it in an indefinite state between heavenly and earthly nature" ^{[9, p. 40]}.

Examples can explain why, as Agamben shows, such an exception is unstable. Humanism, as a product of the production of an anthropological machine, creates zones of indistinguishability, where the "naked life" of animals (dr-Greek. zoē), deprived of the virtues and benefits of reason or freedom, is reflected in human existence — through its often violent dehumanization — for example, in concentration camps or penitentiary institutions ^{[9, p. 50]}.

In other words, the mechanistic reduction of instinct undermines the universality of human nature: if the life of the body is reduced to physiological reactions, then this also applies to the human body, contrary to the formal criteria of "intelligence". Descartes' dualistic system not only serves as the basis of the anthropological machine of the modern era, but also exposes its contradictions, demonstrating that "human" is not a natural category, but a historical product of the exclusion and rupture of functional continuity in animal—human existence, characteristic of ancient teachings about the soul. According to Simondon, Descartes' mechanistic ideas, developing as the antithesis of ancient ideas, had an extraordinary impact on the entire subsequent tradition of scientific practice: "Hence the denial of animal consciousness, the denial of animals' ability to intelligently acquire skills, conscious learning, and intelligent problem solving" ^{[8, p. 111]}.

So, the analysis of the Cartesian approach reveals its inconsistency: reducing animals to "automata" not only excludes the possibility of individuality, but also becomes an epistemological problem for the human mind, isolated from bodily experiences (Simondon). Understanding the dualistic system in metaphysics through the prism of the anthropological machine of modernity (Agamben) shows that the mechanistic reduction of instinct, among other things, produces humanism as an ethical problem of the difference between man and animal. We propose to consider the post-Cartesian aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics, in particular, his doctrine of "complex" substances and the theory of apperception, as a possible alternative to Descartes' system and try to explicate epistemological, ontological and ethical solutions from it, referring to modern readings of Leibnizian philosophy.

2. The boundaries of animal cognition in G. Leibniz's theory of apperception

The context of his research is determined by Leibniz's work "New Experiments on Human Understanding" (completed in 1704), in which the German philosopher enters into a correspondence dispute with the ideas of John Locke. The latter, disputing the existence of innate ideas, allows the formation of the ability to reflexive cognition based on the connections of perceptions (fr. aperception). Leibniz, on the other hand, suggests a more articulate distinction ^{[10, p. 133]}. Perception should be understood as the integration of smaller and more unconscious perceptions into a single sensory image (for example, visual perception of light or auditory perception of noise), and awareness should be understood as the introspective ability of the soul to form connections between such perceptions. Perception is a given of the body's abilities, while apperception creates impressions of the soul itself. Thus, apperception becomes a key point for Leibnizian epistemology, since it explains the validity of experience in sequences of phenomena. If an animal soul is capable of such awareness — for example, as feelings of suffering or joy, as well as actions based on their differences in the process of hunting, playing or learning — does this prove that it has reflection and rational actions? Are animals limited only by the pure experience of perception, mindless life in a stream of indistinct phenomena, or are they aware of their connection with each other? This concerns both the ethical aspect of the problem of animal cognition: the reliability of sensations and subjectivity, and the epistemological aspect: the analysis of experience and the assimilation of knowledge.

The question of the ability of animals to apperception in Leibniz's philosophy can be considered one of the most controversial. Russian—speaking researchers such as P.S. Popov and G.G. Mayorov have made a significant contribution to clarifying the Leibnizian method of cognition, based on the analysis of the philosopher's key texts - "New Experiments on the Human Mind" and "Monadology". Thus, P.S. Popov in his work "The History of Modern Logic" (1960) connects Leibniz's method of cognition with the classification of monads described in Monadology (1914), the fundamental units of the universe that form the basis of complex substances ^{[11, p. 87]}. Animals occupy an intermediate step in the metaphysical hierarchy between plants and humans: their souls possess memory and associative perception, but are devoid of reflection, which, according to Popov, is the prerogative of an exclusively intelligent soul. Popov illustrates this with the example of Leibniz himself from the 26th paragraph of Monadology (1714): "Animals, when they perceive something that strikes them, from which they previously had a similar perception, thanks to memory, expect what was combined in this previous perception, and feelings are aroused in them, similar to those what they had then. For example, when dogs are shown a stick, they recall the pain it caused them and howl or run away" ^{[12, p. 417]}. This type of association, "connection by sequence," according to Popov, does not rise to the level of a reflexive act. Popov interprets conscious activity as a criterion separating humans from animals, and connects this difference with the juxtaposition of necessary "truths of reason" and accidental "truths of fact" ^{[11, p. 88]}.

In his monograph "The Theoretical Philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz" (1973), G. G. Mayorov deepens the analysis by considering apperception in the context of the dynamic typology of perceptions. The author identifies four levels of perception: 1) representations (mutual perception), 2) "small perceptions" (unconscious perceptions), 3) vague perceptions (sensory images), and 4) apperception as "self-awareness" and "the first condition of specifically human knowledge", that is, of higher, spiritual monads ^{[13, p. 184]}. Animals, possessing the first three perceptual abilities, as well as memory and attention — "the ability to holistically respond to a perceived situation" ^{[13, p. 181]} — are limited, according to Majorov, by the external component of consciousness. Majorov emphasizes that apperception is not just awareness of perception as an internal state, but awareness of "all internal states of a spiritual subject in general" ^{[13, p. 184]}.

Both authors agree that Leibniz's apperception is a feature of man (the spiritual monad), but Majorov offers a more systematic analysis, consistently developing epistemological aspects in the context of the metaphysics of monads. Analyzing the works of Russian authors, it becomes clear that the essence of the animal is not for them a special subject of research in the philosophy of Leibniz. Therefore, we find it a productive solution to turn to English-language studies that directly articulate the problem of animals in the epistemology, metaphysics and ontology of Leibniz.

Mark Kulstad in his article "Leibniz, animals and Apperception" (1981) explores Leibniz's theory of apperception in the key of epistemological aspects of animal cognition, based on the textual analysis of "New Experiments" showing that Leibniz allows apperception in animals ^[14]. The "passage about the boar" (English: a boar passage) becomes central to Kulstad's argument: "animals are devoid of understanding <...>, but they have the ability to be aware of more noticeable and prominent impressions, such as a boar noticing a person about whom it previously had only a simple perception"^{[2] [10, p. 165]}. Kulstad notes that "noticing" (fr. s'appercoit) in this case is an act of apperception involving conscious concentration of attention. This example demonstrates that animals are capable of identifying and being conscious of meaningful impressions. According to Kulstad, this allows us to assume that, according to Leibniz, animals are capable of reflexive perception.

The problem of the relationship between apperception and perception in animals receives additional illumination when analyzing the Leibnizian definition of sensation, given in the work "Matter taken in itself" as "perception that contains something distinct and is connected with attention and memory" ^{[15, p. 385]} (Latin Sensio enim est percepito, quae aliquid distincti involvit, et cum attentione et memoria conjuncta est ^{[13, p. 49]}). This definition re-raises the question of the nature of attention and memory in animals, which cannot be reduced to "vague perceptions" (as, for example, Majorov believed ^{[13, p. 181]}), but as distinct impressions on the basis of which animals are inclined to one or another action. Nevertheless, Leibniz sets strict limits to conscious activity: "animals <...> they do not know the generality of judgments (rationes necessarias), because they do not know the grounds of necessity" ^{[15, p. 387]}. They act, says the philosopher, on the basis of pure experience, like empiricists, relying on habit and random series of sequences, and accordingly their attention and memory are completely dependent on the constancy of external stimuli.

To resolve the contradiction, Kulstad offers a distinction between two types of reflection: "simple reflection" of the first order (Eng. mere reflection), related to the perception of external objects, and "Locke reflection" of the second order (Eng. Lockean reflection), aimed at internal states of consciousness. As he writes: "Locke reflection involves focusing the mind's attention on what <...> it is in us, that is, on the self and its actions. <...> Any reflection that is not of this type <...> I call it simple reflection" ^{[14, p. 33]}. This difference, the researcher believes, is fundamentally important for understanding the Leibnizian version of animal apperception. If "simple reflection" stops at the sensory association of images, then "Locke reflection" of consciousness: "Animals are capable of apperception in a way that presupposes reflection, but this is not Locke reflection, which animals are not capable of ^{[14, p. 36]}.

Murray Miles's article "Leibniz on Apperception and animal Souls" (1994) offers a critical analysis of this problem, entering into a polemic with the interpretation of Kulstad. Miles criticizes the concept of "simple reflection", pointing out its "radicality" and terminological vagueness. Miles's main criticism is that Kulstad ignores the categorical nature of Leibniz's claims about the absence of reflection in animals: "The 'radical' alternative faces very serious obstacles, the main of which is Leibniz's 'categorical' denial of reflection in animals" ^{[16, p. 705]}. In contrast to this position, Miles suggests a more rigorous solution based on the distinction between reflexive and non-reflexive apperception "within us." The researcher proves that the external objects of first-order reflection are also internal images of impressions in Leibniz's theory. According to Miles, this approach, which challenges the division into internal and external intentions of consciousness, better corresponds to the texts of Leibniz and preserves the systemic rigor of his metaphysics: "All difficulty disappears if <...> non—reflexive apperception is what elevates perception to the level of sensation, and reflexive apperception elevates sensation to the level of thought" ^{[16, p. 718]}.

Thus, Miles comes to the conclusion that only non-reflexive apperception corresponds to the animal form of cognition. This allows us to reconcile three key theses of Leibniz: the ability of animals to receive impressions from sensations, the need for apperception for sensation, and the lack of reflexive consciousness in animals, that is, rational thinking. Unlike Kulstad, who tries to expand the concept of reflection, Miles insists on the need for a clear terminological distinction, which makes his interpretation more consistent with the original texts of Leibniz and less vulnerable to criticism.

3. Animalcules and Monads: the ontological status of animals in Leibniz's Metaphysics

In the article "Ideas and Animals" (2005), Glen Hartz and Catherine Wilson criticize the idealistic interpretation of Leibniz's late philosophy, according to which the fundamental basis of the universe recognizes exclusively monads as the simplest substances, indivisible, eternal and self-enclosed, that is, not subject to any outside influence. Material bodies are considered as "well-founded phenomena" (Latin ph aenomen on bene fundat um), observed by the monad from itself. As the authors note: "The opinion that Leibniz, around 1700 or some time later, was or became a convinced idealist who believed only in the reality of spirits and their ideas, strangely persists in recent secondary literature" ^{[17, p. 1]}.

This interpretation remains relevant for the majority of Russian-language receptions of Leibnizian ontology. In particular, in the classic historical and philosophical work Leibniz and Descartes (1915), N. Sretensky, a Russian researcher of the early 20th century, translator of Descartes' works, writes about the concept of the Leibnizian world as follows: "Only a series of phenomena, phenomena in the individual soul, is the true and real world" ^{[18, p. 122]}. Much later, in a detailed exposition of Leibniz's teachings, the Soviet philosopher I. S. Narsky would demonstrate the structural complexity of Leibniz's "idealism." According to Narsky, "the material world, according to Leibniz, is no less real than its spiritual, ideal essence, which in turn is as real as spiritually (logically) existing possible other worlds, but its reality is somehow different" ^{[19, p. 143]}. The reality of the ideal essence is presented by Narsky as a logical obstacle to the material manifestation of the world, although with an important caveat about the "spontaneous recognition [by Leibniz] of the objectivity of the material world" ^{[19, p. 147]}. Another Soviet researcher, V. V. Sokolov, states in the preface to the publication of The Theodicy that Leibniz's "ancient idea of the identity of the micro- and macrocosm allowed for both idealistic and materialistic interpretations." <...>: from the world to man or vice versa" ^{[20, p. 33]}.

Harz and Wilson also state the unresolved nature of this contradiction, analyzing the discourse on animals in the late works of the German philosopher. The hierarchical model of "monadological" idealism faces a consistency problem: if "simple" monads are fundamental substances, then how can we explain that Leibniz attributes characteristics to animals (for example, the ability to apperception) that require, according to the principle of pre—established harmony, synchronism between the material body and the ideal soul? The aim of the researchers is to identify vitalistic and even materialistic accents in the analysis of Leibnizian philosophy.

In contrast to the strictly idealistic understanding, the researchers show that animals occupy a special position in the Leibniz system as "corporeal substances" that unite the dominant monad with the organic body. This position is confirmed by a quotation from a letter to the Dutch mathematician Bernoulli (1698), where Leibniz writes that every corporeal substance "arises immediately and even without division, and <...> every animal is such a thing" ^{[17, p. 3]}. According to the authors, this thesis is fundamentally important, since it allows us to overcome the legacy of the Cartesian dichotomy between thinking substance and extended matter, presenting animals as independent units of a metaphysical system.

The ontological status of animals as corporeal substances receives additional justification in Monadology (1714), where Leibniz states: "Every living body has a dominant entelechy, which in an animal is a soul; but the members of this living body are full of other living bodies, plants, animals, of which each has its own entelechy, or dominant soul" ^{[12, p. 425]}. This image of recursive nesting of bodies into each other resembles "animalcules" — microanimals that Leibniz's friend, the greatest microscopist of the 17th century Anton van Leeuwenhoek, saw in bacteria invisible to the eye. Leeuwenhoek's pan-radicalism, the essence of which can be expressed by paraphrasing Thales' famous statement: "Everything is full of life," presupposes a vitalistic intuition, in accordance with which the understanding of substance is presented in a perspective that combines bodily forms and active potencies of the soul in harmony. Obviously, the idea of a monad is a metaphysical analogy of an animalcule borrowed by Leibniz.

The already mentioned Soviet philosopher G. Mayorov notes the multifaceted synthesis of natural science discoveries in Leibniz's philosophy, in particular, in the fields of biology, zoology, physics and mathematics. Leibniz was significantly influenced not only by R. Hooke's microbiological discoveries of plant cell structure and A. Leeuwenhoek's study of bacterial organisms, but also by J. Swammerdamm and M. Malpighi's study of the uniformity of embryonic development in animals in line with the theory of preformism ^{[13, p. 65]}. Majorov subtly emphasizes the elements of vitalism and panpsychism, which penetrated into Leibniz's natural philosophical ideas about the involutional and evolutionary activity of substances. Since the basis of complex substances is the continuous process of life, death as such is impossible in the Leibniz system: there are only processes of coagulation and unfolding of the organic structures of the body. A similar trajectory of understanding Leibniz is chosen by the modern researcher Ada Smailbegovich in the article "Animalcules" (2023). Smailbegovich emphasizes Leibniz's attention to "microanimals" and understands that the animal soul, dependent on external conditions, is more skilful than a self-enclosed "simple" monad, adapted to navigate in the "topography of the microcosm", while the abilities of the mind are focused on finding and clarifying necessary truths ^{[21, p. 25]}. There is no contradiction between these instances of the soul, but, on the contrary, they harmoniously complement each other.

Inspired by Leeuwenhoek's discovery — the relativity of scale provided by optical perspective — Leibniz argues that every soul is a "mirror of the universe" ^{[12, p. 426]}.The organic unity of an animal is not limited to the mechanical aggregation of its parts, but is a system of subordination organized as different optical perspectives of the dominant monad: from microscopic cells to macroscopic bodies. Animals have an indivisible soul and an infinitely divisible body, the state of which is an image expressing a certain perspective of the soul on the integrity of the universe.

According to Hartz and Wilson, Leibniz's internal conflict between "composite substances" communicating with others of the same kind and independent "simple" substances is solved simply: "Animals do not compete with monads for the privilege of being real substances. Rather, simple substances are combined with "organic machines" to give us plants and animals that we observe around us" ^{[17, p. 4]}. Thus, the researchers believe, animals for Leibniz are not just appearances of the inner world of the monad, but real entities with their own ontogenesis. Hartz and Wilson see in "pan-animalculism" a version of Leibniz's ontology that is an alternative to the one implied by the idealistic rigor of monado-centric ontology. However, it is true to note that, according to Leibniz, even if animalcules have a universal character for life, then only monads have a universal meaning. Thus, the problem of Leibnizian idealism remains open, and the existing research only demonstrates the inexhaustible wealth of the scientist's philosophical heritage.

A joint examination of the ontological and epistemological aspects of Leibnizian ideas about animals allows us to place the strict dichotomy between man and animal in a continuum dimension characteristic of post-Cartesian metaphysics. The epistemological analysis of animal abilities in the research of Kulstad and Miles complements this picture, showing that animals in the Leibniz system, although devoid of self-awareness, are capable of a special form of apperception. The ontological perspective of Hartz and Wilson, in turn, demonstrates that animals in the Leibniz system are not just mechanical aggregates of monads, but independent substantial units that are not subject to destruction (but only to the infinite division of their organic parts) and reflect unique perspectives on the universe. The animal monad exists in a world of many bodily sensations, clearly perceiving them in perceptual experience, but exclusively per accidents.

In our opinion, the Leibnizian approach has significant potential for developing modern discussions in the field of philosophy of consciousness, and is also of theoretical interest for critical studies of animals and modern philosophy of nature, offering an alternative to both "strict" dualism in metaphysics and reductionist materialism. A significant contribution to the development of this approach was made by the interpretation of Leibniz's post-Cartesian metaphysics by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, which we propose to consider further.

4. Leibnizian animal psychology as interpreted by Gilles Deleuze

"Uneasiness" is a term by the English philosopher John Locke, which Leibniz uses in New Experiments on Human Understanding to explain the arousal of the soul by a multitude of small perceptions. Locke attaches fundamental importance to the concept of anxiety, according to Leibniz.: "Anxiety is the main, if not the only, incentive that encourages people to engage in fishing and activity" ^{[10, p. 164]}. It can be understood as the state of a person "who feels uneasy" ^{[10, p. 164]}. Leibniz clarifies that anxiety is an indistinguishable multitude of stimuli that originate from an unknown or hidden source and invariably accompany such human passions and states as anger, despair, shame, envy, but also love, fame and hope. In other words, where there is anxiety, desire (fr. appetite) gains strength — at this point Locke and Leibniz come to an understanding: "wherever there is desire, there is anxiety" ^{[10, p. 194]}, since a restless state arouses excitement inside the soul and anticipates feelings of disappointment or pleasure.

These positions are described and developed in his lectures on Leibniz by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, making "anxiety" (fr. l'inquisitude) the leading concept of Leibniz's "psychomathematical" theory. The key to understanding the Leibnizian psychology of anxiety is, according to Deleuze, the animal monad. He puts forward a bold theory: "I really believe that Leibniz is the creator of animal psychology. Animal psychology begins from the moment when you not only believe in the soul of animals, but when you define the situation with this soul as a situation of “being on pins and needles.” <...> What does it mean to be an animal? This means that you will be "on pins and needles" waiting for what may suddenly happen" ^{[22, p. 305]}. "Being on pins and needles" (fr. etre aux aguets) can also be translated as "staying alert." This is what Deleuze calls the principle of animal life^[3]. To be alert means to go into a state of extreme attention, to be ready for unexpected and spontaneous action. A state of rest, on the contrary, is "the integration of a kind of eternal restlessness" ^{[22, p. 306]}. Deleuze argues that it is through the desire generated by anxiety that the boundary between Cartesian mechanism and the Leibnizian principle of harmony lies. The reflex mechanisms of Descartes' "animal machines", as Deleuze says, lack animal anxiety ^{[22, p. 306]}.

The French philosopher connects Leibniz's psychological intuitions with his mathematical discovery: differential notation. When Deleuze argues that perceptual experience is a differential of consciousness, he means that for Leibniz, the ontogenesis of consciousness evolves from infinitely divisible small perceptions of the dynamic properties of matter. These are such properties as "swarming, swarming of small inclinations" ^{[22, p. 211]}, which find their unconscious reflection inside the soul. So, anxiety cannot be reduced to anxiety or fear. First of all, it should be understood as sensory noise that surrounds things that, on the one hand, elude awareness and distinct discrimination in apperception, on the other hand, arouse our inclinations (Latin appetitio) like the forces of attraction and rejection.

To better illustrate the meaning of Deleuze's understanding, let us turn to another work of the philosopher, which systematizes the lecture material in many ways, "Fold. Leibniz and the Baroque" (1988). Gilles Deleuze turns to "anxiety" again to explain the perceptual abilities of the animal soul: "Small perceptions, like the components of each perception, are transitions from one perception to another. They constitute the animal — or animate — state primarily: anxiety" ^{[24, p. 147]}. When Leibniz asserts a similar differentiation of perception and the addition of large perceptions (for example, the noise of the sea or the noise of a crowd of people) from various small ones (the noise of each individual drop or the voice of each individual person), he, according to Deleuze, points to the existence of a correlation between the material and animate modes of a complex substance, which can be overcome in transitions from from one perception to another.

Thus, Leibniz performs a two-stroke operation "consisting of transcendental actualization and realization" ^{[24, p. 209]}, which correspond to the "animalism" and "materialism" of the monad. "Animalism" is the principle of the soul and the living in general, the tact of actualization of perception, in which inert matter "comes to life" in a phenomenological state of restlessness of souls. "Materialism," on the other hand, is the principle of the body, the tact of realization of sensation, in which the body reacts and reflects the movement of the soul. Keeping in mind these two points of the Deleusian interpretation of Leibniz's philosophy, we will proceed to consider the ethical aspects that can be explicated from monadology.

5. The perspectivism of animal monads: the possibility of a posthumanistic reception of Leibniz's philosophy

Posthumanism is a modern humanitarian theory that, based on a critical rethinking of the problems of humanism, develops the ethics of non—human agents such as animals, plants, and technical objects. Francesca Ferrando, a researcher of posthumanism, points out that humanism as a product of an "anthropological machine" is one of the main objects of critical consideration of posthumanism ^{[25, p. 137]}. For its purposes, posthumanist theory mobilizes a huge body of classical works (including metaphysical ones) to propose trajectories for overcoming anthropocentrism in existing approaches to the study of morality and normativity.

One of the key concepts for philosophical posthumanism is the concept of monism in the post-Cartesian philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, who in his opus magnum Ethics Proved in Geometric Order (1677) proclaims the ontological equality of all that exists. Everything that exists, according to Spinoza, is equally an expression of a single substance or nature. Every being is a unity of body and soul and is represented by a finite mode (state) of substance, the actual essence of which is determined through what Spinoza (in Theorem 7 of Chapter III of Ethics) calls the Latin term conatus — "perseverance" or "striving" in being, that is, the ability of being to both maintain its state and and to multiply the power of their forces (Latin potentia) in the world ^{[26, p. 463]}. This allows some modern researchers to understand his teaching from the point of view of "radical neo-materialism," since Spinoza's ontological teaching recognizes the fundamental importance of vitality and seeks to avoid pre-established hierarchies in the classification of beings. For example, the philosopher Rosi Braidotti writes that for Spinoza, "matter is one, it is driven by the desire for self-expression and is ontologically free" ^{[27, p. 109]}. In our opinion, these and some other factors, for example, the Spinozist theory of affects, which certainly deserve more detailed consideration, but which, however, goes beyond the goals and objectives of this study, determine its "convenience" for posthumanistic philosophy.

Leibniz's monadology, on the other hand, comes into direct confrontation with Spinoza's monistic universalism from pluralistic positions and recognizes, as demonstrated above, the multiplicity of bodily substances. Each monad is an independent expression of its inner world, in which other worlds of substances are reflected as possible. Obviously, this directly implies the relevance of considering Leibnizian theory as a "possible" posthumanist thought. Turning to the main works in this field, we find that Leibniz's monadology is undeservedly excluded from the sphere of posthumanistic reflection.

In Ferrando's work "Philosophical Posthumanism" (2019), we find only a cursory mention of Leibniz in connection with his concept of "possible worlds" as a theoretical component of the genealogy of the modern idea of the "multiverse" ^{[25, p. 311]}. This is an important intuition, left, however, by the author without additional comments, apart from the relation of the Leibnizian concept to "high" scholasticism. Indeed, on the one hand, it should be recognized that in the classical interpretation, Leibniz's monadology implies hierarchy and a transcendent element of harmony, which cannot be ignored. On the other hand, the potential of Leibnizian philosophy is not limited to classical readings and deserves to be used for the purposes of critical research focused on rethinking modern problems of ethics and cognition. In this part of the study, relying, in particular, on the "ethological" reception of monadology by Gilles Deleuze (whose philosophy was not directly influenced by the formation of philosophical criticism of humanism), we want to present an attempt at a posthumanistic reception of monadology, using its multimodality and pluralistic perspectivism in order to develop the conceptual apparatus of posthumanistic ethics.

In the French philosopher's appeal to the data of ethology for the interpretation of Leibniz's monadology, one can distinguish the grounds for posthumanistic ethics, which should be understood as "stopping" the anthropological machine of humanism and overcoming the problem of animal-human differences through the ontological equality of animal and human perspectives on the universe. Deleuze reactualizes the psychological theory of animal monads through the prism of the biological theory of the "surrounding world" (German: Umwelt) of an animal, proposed by ethologist Jacob von Ixkull.

The most famous example of Ixkull's research is the description of the phenomenological world of the tick. This world is a bodily landscape consisting of only three simple signs of perception: sensitivity to light, odors and heat. The tick lives in constant expectation of one of the three signals, in a slow flow of time, until the appearance on the horizon of its world of chiaroscuro, musky scent or heat emanating from the body of a living being, does not lead the tick to a certain reaction.

In his work "Journey to the Surrounding Worlds of Animals and Humans" (1934), Ixkull enters into a discussion with the mechanistic reduction of animals to the physiological reactions of their bodies. Instead, he believes that "every living being is a subject living in its own world and being its center" ^{[28, p. 28]}. An animal is not a machine, because each of its living cells is in itself a "machinist" with "signs of perception" and "signs of action" ^{[28, p. 30]}. Ixkull revises the Cartesian theory of reflex: in his perspective, animal behavior is not limited to the mechanics of the reflex arc, it is actively involved as a subject in the "functional circle" connecting the animal's environment with the external environment ^{[28, p. 33]}. Moreover, according to Ixkull, animals have something like "innate ideas": they are able to perform actions that anticipate their future needs, such as migratory birds having an a priori idea of a "familiar path", following, without prior experience, vital migration routes ^{[28, p. 112]}, or spiders which weave nets, as if calculating the sizes and shapes of the insects that should fall into them.

Using the example of the "surrounding world" of the tick, Ixkull seeks to show that the animal "dominates" the passage of time and the spatial relations of its surrounding world ^{[28, p. 36]}. The animal's time and space, respectively, are forms of feelings and perceptions. This leads to a comparison of the observations of the German ethologist with the categories of Immanuel Kant's transcendental aesthetics. On the other hand, it is significant that Ernst Cassirer, one of the largest followers of Kant in the 20th century, describes Ixkull's theory in his Experiments on Man (1944), using the conceptual apparatus of Leibnizian monadology: "Reality is not uniform and not homogeneous, but, on the contrary, extremely diverse: there are just as many different schemes and patterns in it. as well as different organisms. Each organism is like a monad, which has its own world, since it has its own experience" ^{[29, p. 469]}.

Deleuze is captivated by the microcosm of the tick. As he writes, all three organs of perception of the tick form a "clear zone" (fr. une zone claire) of its surrounding world. Here it is important for Deleuze to show the peculiarity of Leibniz's post-Cartesian method: "There is no darkness in us because we have a body, but we must have a body because there is darkness in us: Leibniz replaces the physical Cartesian induction with the moral deduction of the body" ^{[24, p. 146]}. Differentiation of the organs of perception is an ongoing process of clarifying the surrounding world. Modern animal science is well aware of complex biological navigation systems: birds detect ultraviolet radiation, some fish, such as catfish, detect electromagnetic pulses, bats navigate using echolocation, and dolphins, using sonar, are able to scan underwater spaces over vast distances.

The non-reflexive apperception of animal phenomena of the surrounding world, provided by their organs of perception, is neither poorer nor "less" than human cognition, which is guided by the means of the reflecting mind. In a sense, without going beyond the assumptions of Leibniz himself, we can say that the "restless" animal monads are skillfully aware of the complexity of the world around them, and the human mind perfectly comprehends itself, the processes of the inner world. However, this assumption does not exclude the individuality of both "simple" and "corporeal" substances.

In lectures on Leibniz, Deleuze says that the problem of apperception is also the problem of instinct as a mental phenomenon. He uses an original example: "What do children who eat the earth do? By what miracle is it that they eat the earth, when they need the vitamin that this earth contains? It must be an instinct. They're monsters! But even God created monsters in harmony" ^{[22, p. 82]}. Instinctive behavior here explains the goal—setting of harmony: optimal interaction of a living being with pessimistic environmental conditions, which we also see on the example of "familiar paths" in migrating animals^[4]. At the same time, for animals, the optimal criterion is set not by knowing the necessary truths, but by intuitively inventing (calculating) their bodily states from perceptual signs. The animal's ability to apperception can be understood here in a posthumanistic trend: instinct is not a thoughtless sequence of automatic reactions in a chain of reflexes, as Cartesian mechanism suggests, it is a form of thinking about the world around the animal.

Like the counter-idealistic reading of Hartz and Wilson, Deleuze seeks to solve the problem of complex substances by finding it in the continuum properties of perceptual cognition. On this basis, Deleuze redefines the concept of the dominant monad in pre-established harmony, designating it as the "theory of belonging" (fr. thé orie des appartenances). "In the theory of belonging, there is a discovery of the "semi—other" - the animal-in—me as a specific being," writes Deleuze ^{[24, p. 187]}. The semi-other (fr. un demi-étranger) in this example is a kind of possible world that violates the "domination" of a single, "my" monad. Deleuze quotes a letter from Leibniz to Lady Mesham, where the German philosopher develops his views on bodily substances, voiced by him in Monadology, in an unexpected ethical way: "Our body is a kind of world filled with innumerable creatures that also have the right to exist, and if the body were not organized, our microcosm, or the small world would not have all the perfection it should have, and even the big world would not be as rich as it is" ^{[30, p. 594]}. The French philosopher draws an important conclusion that since the metaphysical connection of a rational monad with the external environment is realized through a continuous connection with the inner world of a bodily substance, "not only the psychology of animals, but also their monadology turns out to be essential" ^{[24, p. 188]}.

The posthumanistic trajectories of Deleuze's interpretation are already clearly discernible here: a pluralistic reinterpretation of the provisions of Leibnizian ontology decenerates the human-dimensional understanding of the monad in a wide perceptual spectrum of bodily substance, where, in the case of animal monads, non-reflexive apperceptions presuppose perspectives of the surrounding world that do not contradict, but are compatible with, the inner world of a "simple" monad. Thus, the tick's world is not "smaller" than a human's, it is of a different order and also belongs to the substance. Accordingly, animal states such as anxiety are global in potency, therefore they spread to humans through the general perceptual plane of the body. The reflexive awareness of sensations as given to thinking does not point to the exclusivity of the human mind (which is what the idealistic interpretation leads to), but to the animal alter ego as a prospect of pre-established harmony. This allows us to go further and revise the Leibnizian draft of theodicy, taking into account animal monads as correlates of the "best of all possible worlds." However, we reserve this task for further research, articulating only its possibility and relevance, in particular, in connection with issues of posthumanistic ethics and ecological philosophy of nature.

Conclusion

In our study, we have made a critical analysis of Descartes' dualistic system, which reduces animals to "physical automata" in its approach. This approach, as shown, not only excludes animals from the sphere of reason, but also creates internal contradictions in the metaphysical view of man: the reduction of physicality to mechanical reactions becomes a "dark spot" for the universal characteristic of the mind. In order to clarify, we turned to aspects of Leibniz's philosophy, in which animals acquire the status of "bodily substances" capable of non-reflexive apperception. M. Kulstad insists on Leibniz's assumption of "simple reflection" in animals and emphasizes their ability to focus attention on significant objects. Miles, on the other hand, strictly separates reflection and apperception in Leibniz's theory: animals are able to recognize perceptions as states of their inner world, but not reflect on their causes. However, both researchers agree on the main point: Leibniz's apperception is not a reflex, but a form of mental activity that serves as a link between internal needs and external conditions. Leibniz's philosophy and its modern interpretations make it possible to rethink the figure of animals in classical metaphysics, revising the rigor of mechanistic presuppositions. As G. Hartz and K. Wilson show, Leibniz's recognition of animals as "corporeal substances" with an immortal soul, capable of peculiar apperception, control of phenomenal forms of attention and memory, offers an alternative to the idealistic understanding of Leibniz's metaphysics. The omnipresence of animal substances, which Leibniz recognizes after Leeuwenhoek's animalculism, but from the standpoint of monadology, explains the recursive logic of pre-established harmony in the necessary subordination of soul and body.

Finally, we place Leibniz's monadology in the context of the modern problematic of philosophical posthumanism and demonstrate that not only the monistic ontology of B. Spinoza, but also, in a sense, the pluralistic monadology of Leibniz can expand the conceptual apparatus of modern research in the field of non-human consciousness and ethics. To do this, we turn to Gilles Deleuze's reception of Leibniz's "psychomathematical" theory of small perceptions. Comparing Leibniz's theory with the conclusions from the research of ethologist Jacob von Ixkull, Deleuze suggests rethinking animals as active "participants" in the metaphysical order, conscious of their "surrounding world" (Umwelt). Analyzing Leibniz's idea of "anxiety" as an element of animal psychology allows Deleuze to explicate the concept of "animal monadology", which opens the way to the ethical perspectivism characteristic of posthumanist philosophy and ethics based on its conclusions. Animals (and in a sense, people in pre-reflexive states) appear here not as passive objects of physiological laws, but as active agents of substances that construct their own world using apperception of alternating internal states. This opens the way to posthumanistic ethics, where instinctive practices are recognized as forms of alternative knowledge about the peculiar features of the "surrounding worlds" of animals. Thus, Leibnizian metaphysics, read through the problematics of animal-human differences, asserts the continuity and ontological possibility of various animal-human perspectives on the world.

^[1] For example, in a letter from 1643, Elizabeth of Bohemia, an active correspondent of Descartes, asked him to explain how, without being extended, "the human soul can induce bodily spirits (esprits du corps) to perform arbitrary actions" ^{[7, p. 489]}.

^[2] The Russian translation in this case is not entirely accurate. Kulstad cites Leibniz's original quote in French: "les bestes n'ont point d'entendement, . . . quoyque elles ayent la faculté de s'appercevoir des impressions plus remarkables et plus distinguées, comme le sanglier s'appercoit d'une personne qui luy crie" ^{[14, p. 28]}. We offer the following translation option, appropriate to the context of the problem: "animals are devoid of understanding <...>, but they have the ability to apperception (s'appercevoir) of noticeable and vivid impressions, as, for example, a boar has a simple perception (s'appercoit) of a person who calls him."

^[3] See the chapter "A as in Animal" in Deleuze's Alphabet, where Deleuze draws on the same concept to explain the connection between animal and philosophy ^[23].

^[4] As Ixkull states: "The optimal, that is, the most favorable, environment and the pessimal environment can be considered the general rule" ^{[28, p. 35]}.