Varia a me cogitantur: Leibniz e i fondamenti della conoscenza empirica

Despite the importance Leibniz ascribed to factual or empirical knowledge, scholars did not pay much attention to his reflections on this subject. It is well-known that Leibniz maintained that there are some primary truths among the so-called truths of fact as well as among the truths of reason, but the nature, scope, and role of the primary truths of fact still remain unclear. The present paper aims to account for Leibniz’s commitment to the existence of such truths, by clarifying some of the epistemic properties he ascribed to them – first of all their indubitability and indemonstrability. The explanation I propose is that Leibniz’s claims are rooted in his long-standing doctrine of the infallibility of immediate perception, which must be read in the context of his theory of perceptual error.