This paper seeks to examine two moments of the subject’s identification with substance in modernity, namely, the body in Hobbesian philosophy and the individual substance in Leibnizian thought. In Hobbes, to be a subject signifies to be subjected (to imaginary space, to the movements transmitted by means of shock, as well as to the sovereign), so that the body-substance is characterized by not having in itself its principle of movement. In Leibniz, for his turn, a subject (understood as substance) is that which contains in its own nature everything that can be truly predicated about it, implying that it is the foundation and principle of its own activity, or, in a word, it is self-sufficient. Nonetheless, although Hobbesian body is characterized by its inertia and Leibnizian substance by its self-sufficiency, it is my purpose to indicate that the former is more crucial than the latter to the constitution of the modern conception of subjectivity, i.e., of the subject as the center of action and as a founding power, capable of establishing a new order by its decision. This is not possible in Leibnizian philosophy, for, according to it, human activity, like that of any other substance, consists solely in the actualization of the divine plan of the best of all possible worlds.

本文力图考察主体在现代性中被主体认同的两个时刻，即霍布斯哲学中的主体和莱布尼兹思想中的个体主体。在霍布斯中，成为主体意味着要经受（虚构的空间，通过冲击传递的运动以及主权者），因此，身体的特征是本身没有运动原理。在莱布尼兹（Leibniz）中，一个主题（被理解为实质）是一个具有其自身性质的事物，可以真正以此为前提，这意味着它是其自身活动的基础和原理，或者总之，它是自给自足的。尽管如此，尽管霍布斯人体的特点是惯性，莱布尼兹实质的特点是自给自足，我的目的是要指出，前者比现代后者在主观性现代观念的构成上更为关键，即主体作为行动的中心和创始国，能够通过其决定来建立新秩序。 。在莱布尼兹哲学中这是不可能的，因为据此，人类活动，就像任何其他物质的活动一样，仅在于实现所有可能世界中最好的神圣计划的实现。