ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explain how and why all human cognition depends on the body for Gottfried Wilhelm. Leibniz. It shows that there are three types of dependence: the body is needed in order to supply materials, or content, for thinking; the body is needed in order to give us the opportunity for the discovery of innate ideas; and the body is needed in order to provide sensory notions as vehicles of thought. Leibniz famously holds that created substances do not interact, metaphysically speaking; all non-miraculous states arise in them spontaneously, from their own depths. The doctrine of pre-established harmony gives one sense in which all cognition is embodied: there is a perfect correspondence between mental and physical states. The chapter examines Leibniz’s theory of the imagination and its role in abstract thought. The imagination contains notions that are supplied by at least one of the external senses.
