ABSTRACT
In “The Monadology” (1714) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz asserted two kinds of truth, a distinction which has had an enormous influence on the theory of mean ing to the present day. He sharply separates “truths of reasoning” from “truths of fact.” The first kind comprises truths by analytical necessity; the second kind, contingent truths, require a body of reasoning to prop them up. To avoid an infinite regress of explanation Leibniz introduced the procedure of “sufficient reason” which allows us to align contingency with analyticity.1 Kant was later to call this bridging of reason and the phenomenal the “synthetic judgment.” What this means for a directional theory of meaning is threefold.
