Leibniz on the Modal Status of Absolute Space and Time

NosLeibniz is a relationalist about space and time.He believes that nothing spatial or temporal is more fundamental than the spatial and temporal relations that obtain between things.These relations are direct: they are unmediated by anything spatially or temporally absolute such as points in space or moments in time.Some philosophers, for example, Newton and Clarke, disagree.They think that space and time are absolute.Their absolutism can take different forms.Newton, for example, believes that space is a substance, or more accurately, something substance-like. 2A substance is not a relation of any kind.Therefore, if space is a substance or substance-like, then it is absolute.Other absolutists, such as Clarke, believe that space is a monadic property of God.A monadic property is not a relation and thus if space is a monadic property, then it is absolute.Leibniz clearly thinks that absolutism is false.What is less clear is his attitude toward its modal status.Are absolute space and time merely contingently non-actual or are they impossible?In his correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz makes a number of claims regarding this issue that appear, on the face of it, to be inconsistent with one another.He argues that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles (the PII) follows from God's wisdom.God's wisdom is the basis of only contingent truths, thus it would follow that the PII is a contingent truth.He argues against absolute space and time by way of the PII.This suggests that relationalism is also a contingent truth and so absolute space and time