Leibniz's sphere of activity: Scientific objects, self-consciousness, and scientific academies

This dissertation is a study of the ways Leibniz relocated and modified his personal and social circumstances into scientific objects, self-consciousness, and distinctive social interactions in the newly established Berlin academy. I consider these three relocations as essential phases in the process whereby intellectuals engage when they construct for themselves a cultural and epistemological sphere of activity.;I present Leibniz's sphere of activity as a non-perceivable metaphysical realm that is not located in physical space and promotes what I call a monadic social interaction. Spheres of activity arise through the relocation and modification of personal and social dispositions into new objects (languages, experiments, etc.). The preliminary objects become the basic furniture of that sphere and enable the intellectual to discover him/herself both as a perceiving subject and as a recognized object living among other objects. The discovery and understanding of the self further clarifies the nature of the social interaction occurring in the sphere.;First I point out that Leibniz's early geometrical entities prefigure his mature notions of physical and metaphysical forces and the perceptual reality of monads. Second, I present the nature of the self in Leibniz's sphere of activity and oppose it to that of Locke (as one exemplar of the self-image of members of the Royal Society). Leibniz develops and discovers his self through correspondence with other men of letters. This leads him to construct a monadic rational self that owns an internal mirror. Yet Leibniz's monadic self is also rooted in the public life of princely courts; we find him shifting his personal disposition as a court official into a metaphysical realm where his rational self flourishes. In contrast, Locke's person is realized in a very different public sphere of face-to-face interaction among distinguished peers. His self relocates and epitomizes the English gentleman's position as a property owner secured with private rights. Finally, I analyze a few of Leibniz's unsuccessful attempts to use his metaphysical sphere as a vehicle for self-fashioning and for the establishment of new scientific academies that would reinforce his intellectual self.