On one level, there is little disagreement concerning the main features of Leibniz’s philosophy of time. No one would dispute, for instance, that Leibniz maintained the following three theses:
Time is relational. That is, time is not itself a physical entity, but is rather a relation or ordering of such entities as are not coexistent.Time is ideal. Being relational, time has no existence apart form the things it relates; it is therefore an ideal entity. What exactly Leibniz meant by this is, as we shall see, a matter of dispute: Russell’s view that it follows from an ontology which denies the reality of relational facts (such as “a is before b”) has recently been forcefully challenged by Ishiguro and others.1 But whatever its exact meaning, the ideality of time is clearly consonant with Leibniz’s belief that continuity is a concept that strictly applies only to ideal entities, and thatTime is a continuous quantity.