The Simultaneous Representation of Existing and Non-existing Phenomena in Borges’ Ficciones

J orge Luis Borges once said about Leibniz that the latter invented a universal harmony; Borges did not say, however, that Leibniz discovered a universal harmony (Agheana 46). The difference between the two is not insignificant: it has to do both with Borges’ lack of faith in an external order, and with the fact that he does not reject the possibility that an order may be constructed (in a closed and fictitious system). Yet Borges did not disagree entirely with Leibniz, who, in his The Monadology (1714), wrote the following passage1: