What was Leibniz’s position on ‘absolute monarchy’? My contribution breaks this question down into two: Firstly, it asks about Leibniz’s opinion on absolute sovereignty as a theoretical paradigm, and secondly, about his view on the enhanced power of some monarchies that could be observed de facto. Leibniz rejects the theoretical paradigm developed, for instance, by Hobbes - rather, he proposes a gradual understanding of sovereignty inspired by the Holy Roman Empire, in which both the Empire and the individual territories can (...) be said to be ‘sovereign’. On the other hand, Leibniz’s position on the de facto shift of power in favour of some monarchs was more ambivalent and pragmatic: Which system of government he favoured depended on its political consequences in each individual case, especially with regard to the balance of power in Europe. Leibniz rejected the pronounced anti-absolutism of his liberal contemporaries in Britain. In his view, whatever its system of government, a state is good if it follows reason. (shrink)

Rodriguez-Pereyra (2013) points to at least six different principles referred to as the principle of contradiction in Leibniz and states: ‘The texts suggest that on different occasions he used ‘Principle of Contradiction’ to refer to different principles. This is puzzling, given the subtlety and power of Leibniz’s mind, for it suggests that he did not really distinguish between the different versions of the principle.’ Rodriguez-Pereyra himself suggests that the ‘different principles’ are versions of the PC, as they are all principles (...) which exclude true contradiction and serve to ground mathematical and necessary truths but thinks that it needs to be spelled out more clearly how it is possible that different principles are one principle, without Leibniz taking note of this. The present paper builds on Rodriguez-Pereyra’s and shows that the different formulations of the PC amount to different logical contents. I shed light, however, on their unity and argue that the different logical contents are expressions of one epistemic principle, which I argue is the PC. The PC in my interpretation defines an act of reason by virtue of which the contrary of the contradiction is concluded to be necessarily true. I show that all of Leibniz’ formulations of the PC refer to different logical contents of this one principle and that this principle matches the two criteria Rodriguez-Pereyra establishes as constants in all six formulations. I argue that it is this epistemic unity that makes the PC a principle and one principle and that the PC itself should thus be seen to lie in this epistemic unity and not in the different logical expressions of it. (shrink)

Leibniz developed his Cogitationes novæ on acoustics in the period of 1682 to 1685 in concomitance with epistolary exchanges with Schelhammer and Mariotte. In this piece, he sets forth an explanatory model for the production, transmission and hearing of sounds. Different from those of contemporaries, such as Claude Perrault’s, this model is based on a conception of vibratory processes enabling the prevalent replication of sounds of a given tonality. Furthermore, Leibniz’s hypothesis implies the essential elasticity of sounding bodies and a (...) quasi-universal vibrating capacity of air as a transmission medium. Duly analyzed, this hypothesis reveals its conformity with the architectonic principles constitutive of Leibnizian science. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of the notion of hope in Leibniz’s philosophy and argues that contrary to what has been claimed by recent commentators, Leibniz should not be counted among the philosophical proponents of hope. I argue, firstly, that there are insufficient textual grounds for making ‘hope’ a central concept in Leibniz’s philosophical apparatus; as it figures in his writings, it does not appear to serve a distinct function. However, this textual insignificance points to a deeper issue in his (...) philosophy: is there need - or even room - for hope in the best of all possible worlds? In the final part of the article, I argue that Leibniz’s brand of optimism makes hope theologically redundant. Although this tendency sets Leibniz apart from the Augustinian-Lutheran strain of Christianity, it reflects a tension that is inherent in Christianity itself, namely one between hope and faith. (shrink)

In the eighteenth century, German hermeneutics developed out of the convergence of Pietism and Enlightenment. The initial conflict between the two traditions soon turned into a fruitful exchange of ideas that led to a radical reform of protestant orthodoxy. A new intellectual figure was born: the enlightener-pietist (or vice versa), who dominated the cultural scene of the time. This confluence of ideas caused three important results: 1. The need for a general hermeneutics that included sacred hermeneutics and could be applied (...) to all kinds of texts. 2. The awareness that the author’s intentions are not the exclusive reference for determining sense, since sense may also concern the text or the recipient. 3. The historicing of interpretation: author and text can be understood only in their historical context. Thanks to hermeneutics, the historical sense makes its official entry into German culture. (shrink)

How could the methods of critical historiography be established in the middle of the 18th century? The following study presents an example, the Royal librarian and successor of Leibniz, Johann Heinrich Jung. One of the many treatises Jung elaborated was a ‘History of the Counts of Bentheim’, published 1773, which demonstrates almost paradigmatically, what a critical examination of the sources could achieve. Jung’s notes, consisting of 14 volumes, stored in the Leibniz Bibliothek in Hanover, are documents of Jung’s meticulous research, (...) at which ends the County of Bentheim’s early heroic history almost dissapears, but there are also documenting his remarkable academic network. In his ‘History’ the first Counts of Bentheim get completly unmasked by Jung as panegyrical construction, and by a diligent comparison of the sources the primordial history of the County is exposed as a pure local patriotic invention. (shrink)