Relation and Individuation in the Philosophy of Leibniz

The ideal plane of the relation, that is to say the fact that, as we have seen, it cannot boast the same reality as the substantial entity, is far from constituting a defective ontological trait. In some way it indicates the demand for something more that, traceable within the individual, at the same time is not reducible to the predicates that constitute its internal notion; instead, it pertains to an order and a formal connection of the arrangements and actions of each substance, in which a rule can be found for accessing understanding of the phenomena that characterize the life of the whole universe.