Leibniz's new essays
| Abstract | In his New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz presents an extended critical commentary on Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Leibniz read some of Locke’s work in English and then, a few years later, the whole of it in French, a language in which he was more comfortable. Over a period of about two further years, on and off, he wrote his New Essays, which he finished at about the time Locke died and which was not published until about half a century after Leibniz’s death. (He left them unpublished partly because they had been motivated by a hope of getting Locke to reply, and Locke’s death put an end to that; though his character made it a forlorn hope in any case.) The New Essays has been an important work: for one thing, Kant read it on its first appearance, and scholars say that this was a decisive event in his philosophical development. Anyway, given that this is one of Leibniz’s only two philosophical works of substantial book length, in all the torrent that poured from his pen, and given also that it is focused - critically but with respect and careful attentiveness - on the greatest classic of English philosophy, it is surprising that the New Essays had to wait until 1981 for a usable English translation.1 In 1896 there was published a sort of translation by A. G. Langley;2 but it is inaccurate far beyond the bounds of normal incompetence, as well as being grimly unreadable for stylistic reasons. As Chesterton once said about The Origin of Species, it is surprising how many people think they have read it, but I'll bet that nobody alive has slogged through the Langley version from cover to cover. It is a pity that the work was not decently available in English for nearly three centuries, because even for those who can read the French of, say, Descartes, Leibniz’s French is difficult. He reserved his native German for writings on history and politics, using French and Latin for philosophy and mathematics; presumably French was chosen for the New Essays because Leibniz wanted to respond to a popular work by a popular work.. | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesGottfried Leibniz (1996). New Essays on Human Understanding. Cambridge University Press.
Nicholas Jolley (1984). Leibniz and Locke: A Study of the New Essays on Human Understanding. Oxford University Press.
Harry G. Frankfurt (1976). Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays. University of Notre Dame Press.
Donald Rutherford & J. A. Cover (eds.) (2005). Leibniz: Nature and Freedom. Oxford University Press.
Jan-Erik Jones (2006). Leibniz and Locke and the Debate Over Species. In François Duchesneau & Jérémie Girard (eds.), Leibniz selon les Nouxeaux Essais sur l'entendement Humain. Vrin and Bellarmin.
Tomás Guillén Vera (1991). La Polémita Sobre Lo Innato En El Libro I de Los 'Nuevos Ensayos'. Theoria 6 (1):67-81.
Tomás Guillén Vera (1991). La polémita sobre lo innato en el libro I de los 'Nuevos Ensayos'. Theoria 6 (1-2):67-81.
Paul Lodge (2002). Leibniz, Bayle, and Locke on Faith and Reason. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (4):575-600.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2004). On Estimating the Uncertain. The Leibniz Review 14:43-53.
Wolfgang David Cirilo de Melo & James Cussens (2004). Leibniz on Estimating the Uncertain. The Leibniz Review 14:31-41.
G. A. J. Rogers (1986). Leibniz and Locke. A Study of the "New Essays on Human Understanding". Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (4):556-558.
Anja Jauernig (2008). Kant's Critique of the Leibnizian Philosophy : Contra the Leibnizians, but Pro Leibniz. In Daniel Garber & Béatrice Longuenesse (eds.), Kant and the Early Moderns. Princeton University Press.
Harry G. Frankfurt (1972). Leibniz. Garden City, N.Y.,Anchor Books.
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