Abstract
Samuel Beckett was attracted to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: inventor of the Calculus, the mastery of which Beckett lacked; author of the Monadology, which he hugely admired; and proponent of pre-established harmony, the theology and optimism of which he found absurd. Few studies of Beckett and Leibniz have noted (and but fleetingly) how the mathematics of Leibniz inform his other writings. Beckett’s knowledge of the Calculus was minimal, but he appreciated its importance within the Western mathematical tradition, of which he had a good knowledge; and he found in Berkeley’s criticism of the calculus of Newton and Leibniz a mode of mathematical analysis that defined indelibly his outlook on and his representations of substance, identity, infinity, divinity, and nothing.