Leibniz: Metaphysics

Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) profoundly shaped early eighteenth-century European philosophy with an a priori demonstration of the existence of God and influential defenses of substance dualism and human freedom. Throughout his works, he defended absolute space, the passivity of matter, and constant divine activity in the world, which jointly provided a metaphysical basis for the quickly popularizing Newtonian thought.

First published Sat Apr 5, 2003; most recent substantive revision Wed Aug 22, 2018. -/- Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) was the most influential British philosopher in the generation between Locke and Berkeley. His philosophical interests were mostly in metaphysics, theology, and ethics.

Leibniz, como muchos de sus contemporáneos, establece algunas conexiones conceptuales entre la noción de espacio y la noción de tiempo. Al ser el concepto de tiempo mucho menos explorado por Leibniz que el concepto del espacio, esta analogía nos puede abrir algunos caminos de interpretación valiosos. Sin embargo, es importante hacer un análisis detallado sobre los límites de la analogía y las notas características que se pueden extrapolar entre estos dos términos, pues no existe entre ellos un paralelismo estricto. El (...) objetivo del presente artículo es señalar algunas notas esenciales del concepto leibniziano de tiempo a partir de su teoría del espacio. Para ello, se definirán las extrapolaciones válidas e inválidas entre estas dos nociones. Con ello se delineará una noción clara de tiempo, se mostrarán las posibles incongruencias que muestra este concepto respecto al sistema leibniziano y, finalmente, se ofrecerán algunas posibles vías de solución a estas inconsistencias. (shrink)

Neste trabalho, nos propomos percorrer algumas etapas do debate sobre a relevância das causas finais nas investigações físicas, que levou Leibniz a confrontar sua filosofia, de modo particular, com o cartesianismo e, mais em geral, com uma concepção estritamente mecanicista da natureza. Serão seguidos aqueles indícios que se encontram na obra de Leibniz, ao procurar pelas referências a Molyneux, um dos primeiros a receber e divulgar a perspectiva leibniziana, e, além disso, um dos poucos interlocutores com os quais se instaurou (...) um diálogo de tons cordiais. Tentaremos mostrar que, todavia, tal troca não polêmica é fruto de um desentendimento de fundo entre os dois intelectuais. (shrink)

Leibniz denies Spinoza’s claim that all possible things actually exist. He also denies necessitarianism, Spinoza’s claim that all truths are necessary truths. Both denials seem plausible. What is surprising, however, is Leibniz’s view that the first claim entails the second, i.e., that the existence of all possible things implies necessitarianism. Why think this? Couldn’t it be that, as a matter of contingent fact, all possible things actually exist? There seems to be no incoherency in claiming both that all possible things (...) actually exist and that fewer things could have existed. In this paper, I explain why Leibniz thought that such a position is indeed inconsistent. My thesis is that the Principle of Sufficient Reason plays a decisive role in his reasoning. Leibniz claims that the non-existence of a thing requires a sufficient reason. He also holds that if all possible things can coexist, such a reason cannot be given. Together these claims rule out a scenario in which all possible things actually exist, but only contingently so. (shrink)

A continuidade e a ruptura entre homens e animais apontam para um impasse interno da filosofia de Leibniz. Por um lado, ele deve poder dar conta da emergência do que é propriamente humano a partir da animalidade obedecendo ao Princípio de Continuidade ; por outro lado, a racionalidade introduz uma diferença qualitativa que não parece poder ser redutível a uma mera distinção de graus. Sem procurar eliminar essa tensão conceitual, o artigo trata de entender suas consequências para o projeto filosófico (...) de Leibniz e da Modernidade como um todo. (shrink)

En nuestro trabajo estudiamos el debate entre Leibniz y De Volder acerca de la naturaleza de la sustancia. En particular, argumentamos que a pesar de no encontrarse en la correspondencia un argumento a priori a favor de la definición de sustancia como fuerza primitiva activa, Leibniz presenta una justificación de la misma en otros términos. En primer lugar, analizamos la prueba a priori a favor de las fuerzas vivas y criticamos su validez para la metafísica. En segundo lugar, examinamos la (...) defensa que Leibniz lleva adelante de su definición y evaluamos el procedimiento que subyace a ella. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza la concepción perspectivista del conocimiento, tal como es expuesta por Leibniz en los Nuevos Ensayos, como uno de los aspectos que marca la originalidad de este pensador en la Ilustración racionalista. Se defenderá que esta concepción se sustenta en dos tesis. En primer lugar, Leibniz sostiene que todo conocimiento humano es esencialmente perspectivista, pero esto no impide sostener, contra el escepticismo, que en cada caso las diferentes perspectivas ofrecen un conocimiento diverso de un mismo mundo. (...) En segundo lugar, para que esta perspectiva pueda ser considerada como racional y posibilite la sabiduría es preciso que tal perspectiva se reconozca a sí misma de modo auto-reflexivo como tal, es decir como un conocimiento parcial y confuso de una realidad con sentido. (shrink)

La técnica artística de la perspectiva es el lugar del nacimiento de una idea cuyo potencial trascendió la esfera del arte: el punto de vista. En efecto, la idea de la construcción del plano visual a partir de un punto de vista determinado ocasiona la transformación del estatuto del objeto en el plano representativo, donde pasa de tener el carácter de la presencia o presentación, al de la construcción o re-presentación. No en vano la época cultural donde se produce el (...) surgimiento de la técnica pictórica de la perspectiva es la misma donde surge la idea del individuo como nuevo centro metafísico. El presente artículo persigue este doble surgimiento centrándose en los siguientes aspectos: una presentación técnica de la herramienta artística de la perspectiva; el ámbito cultural que favoreció la intersección entre perspectiva artística y metafísica, especialmente N. de Cusa; y la idea metafísica de la perspectiva en los escritos de G. W. Leibniz. La última parte del artículo plantea las dificultades y fortalezas que ocasiona la consideración de la mónada como punto de vista para una teoría de la sustancia y sus necesarias relaciones con los conceptos de expresión y armonía preestablecida. (shrink)

Los autores resultan tanto más difíciles de entender cuanto más originales son sus planteamientos. El contexto de lectura de las obras de un innovador no puede ser otro que el previo a la innovación, aquel en que se acuñaron los términos que por necesidad él tendrá que utilizar, bien que dotándoles de nuevo sentido. Lo normal es que este nuevo sentido pase inadvertido para el lector, que tenderá a interpretar esos términos en su sentido tradicional. Esto es por demás evidente (...) en el caso de la filosofía de Zubiri, al que con frecuencia se le ha interpretado con categorías racionalistas completamente extrañas a su pensamiento. En este artículo se intenta aclarar ese punto, confrontando la razón pura leibniziana con la inteligencia impura o sentiente de Zubiri. Son dos modos distintos de entender el pensamiento y la realidad, que generan a su vez dos teorías filosóficas divergentes. (shrink)

This article explores the relations between Leibniz and the French erudite Pierre-Daniel Huet in the context of their shared anti-Cartesianism. After an introductory survey of the available commentaries and primary texts, I focus on a publication by Leibniz in the Journal des sçavans from 1693, where he fully endorses the critique of Descartes developed by Huet in his 1689 Censura philosophiae cartesianae. Next, I provide some indications as to Leibniz’s motivations behind this public approval of Huet. First, I show how (...) Leibniz throughout the 1690s was attempting to have his 1692 Animadversiones in partem generalem Principiorum Cartesianorum and other anti-Cartesian items annexed to a reedition of Huet’s Censura. I finally show how these attempts to team up with Huet were prompted by Leibniz’s dislike of certain German Cartesians, in particular J. E. Schweling, and by his fear that orthodox Cartesianism might do irremediable damage to the intellectual ethics of the Republic of Letters. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza el concepto leibniziano de «creación de la nada» desde una doble perspectiva. Por un lado, se expone el modelo esencialista de la creación, entendida como traslado de esencias desde el plano de la mera posibilidad al plano de la existencia, y las dificultades que este planteamiento supone, al devaluar la causalidad divina. Por otro, se expone el modelo «participacionista», según el cual toda la perfección de la criatura se encuentra en actual y radical dependencia de las (...) perfecciones divinas. Se señalan las dificultades que este modelo implica, sobre todo en virtud de la introducción del controvertido concepto de «participación en la nada». Finalmente, se intenta mostrar de qué modo la explicitación técnica de la idea de participación, mediante la definición de la sustancia individual a partir de la notio completa posible presente en el entendimiento divino, implica la reducción de este modelo participacionista al planteamiento esencialista predominante en el pensamiento de Leibniz. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss how Leibniz’s first correspondence with Malebranche from early 1676 can shed new light on the notorious “all-things-are-one”-passage found in the Quod ens perfectissimum sit possibile from late 1676—a passage that has been taken as an expression of monism or Spinozism in the young Leibniz. The correspondence with Malebranche provides a deeper understanding of Leibniz’s use of the notions of “real distinction” and “separability” in the ATOP. This forms the background for a discussion of Leibniz’s commitment (...) to the monist position expounded in the ATOP. Thus, on the basis of a close analysis of Leibniz’s use of these key terms in the Malebranche correspondence, I provide two possible, and contrary, interpretations of the ATOP, namely, a “non-commitment account” and a “commitment account.” Finally, I explain why I consider the commitment account to be the more compelling of the two. (shrink)

Elephants need no less than twenty-two months. But what are elephants in comparison with reason, whose incubation took more than twenty-three centuries, beginning with the dawn of western philosophy in the sixth century BCE and ending in Leibniz’s formulation of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Carraud’s fascinating book tells the story of the very last stages of this Heideggerian plot, which is also the story of the rise and fall of the efficient cause in early modern philosophy and of the (...) rehabilitation of the final cause. The chronological frame of the book is roughly the century between Suarez’s Disputationes metaphysicae and Leibniz’s De rerum originatione radicali and Les 24 thèses métaphysiques. (shrink)

Over the past decades a number of scholars have identified Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld as one of the most decisive early influences on Leibniz. In particular, the impressive similarity between their conceptions of universal harmony has been stressed. Since the issue of relations is at the heart of both Bisterfeld and Leibniz’s doctrines of universal harmony, the extent of the similarity between their doctrines will depend, however, on Bisterfeld and Leibniz’s respective theories of relations, and especially on their ontologies of relations. (...) This paper attempts to determine in more detail whether Bisterfeld’s ontology of relations contains at least the germ of the defining features of the ontology of relations later developed by Leibniz. It comes to the conclusion that, although Bisterfeld’s theory of relations is not as fully developed and explicit as that of Leibniz, it does contain all the key “ingredients” of it. (shrink)

Approaches to historical figures may be roughly divided into three clumps. Internalist approaches feature close textual exegesis, analyzing, interpreting and interpolating various texts of the thinker, all in aid of careful exposition of his or her flow of thought; Don Rutherford’s Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature provides an exemplar here. Externalist approaches attempt to place the thinker in his or her intellectual milieu, paying careful attention to links of origin and consequence; Catherine Wilson’s Leibniz’s metaphysics: a historical and (...) comparative study is an exemplar of this sort of work. Historicist approaches attempt to find contemporary relevance for aspects of the thinker’s work, oftentimes extending and extrapolating elements of the original texts in consistent and coherent ways; Dionysios Anastasiou Anapolitanos’s Leibniz: Representation, Continuity, and the Spatio-Temporal is an exemplar of this approach. Anapolitanos investigates Leibniz’s writings on the continuum in an attempt not only to discover the nature of Leibniz’s view of the issues, but also to asses his successes and failures in dealing with this difficult topic’s inherent problems. Anapolitanos‘s conclusion is quite straightforward: Leibniz’s own solution to the labyrinthus continui fails, but “without substantial modifications, his metaphysics could have allowed him to adopt a solution much closer to our modern conception of the problem.” This is a bold claim, clearly revisionary, clearly historicist, perhaps anachronistic, but, if Anapolitanos can successfully make his argument, it is a useful and interesting point to add to contemporary Leibniz scholarship. In my view, the argument succeeds. (shrink)

Throughout his early writings, Leibniz was concerned with developing an acceptable account of God's relationship to the created world. In some of these early writings, he endorsed the idea that this relationship was similar to the human soul's relationship to the body. Though he eventually came to reject this idea, theanima mundi thesis remained the topic of several essays and correspondences during his career, culminating in the correspondence with Clarke. At first glance,Leibniz's discussions of this thesis may seem less important (...) in comparison to others, since it might seem like a topic which is far removed from what are regarded as his most important philosophical doctrines. I hope to show in what follows that such a view is mistaken. The large amount of attention Leibniz paid to this thesis is a sure indication of its importance to him. Further, as we shall see, his discussions of this thesis tum on some of his most interesting metaphysical topics, including the development of his thinking about the actual infinite, the structure of organic wholes, and the relationship between God and the created universe. In what follows, I examine these discussions chronologically, from the De Summa Rerum (1675-6), to the correspondence with Clarke (1715-6). (shrink)

Robert M. Adams’s Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist will be a landmark in Leibniz scholarship. It is a privilege to be asked to comment on it.

It has become something of a received view among contemporary scholars that Leibniz first adopted the pre-established harmony around the time of the Discourse on Metaphysics and Correspondence with Arnauld, i.e., 1686-87. However, in their recent contribution to the Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, Christia Mercer and Robert Sleigh Jr. have challenged this orthodoxy by claiming that Leibniz was committed to the doctrine, in all but name, by April 1676. In the present paper, I argue that the evidence that Mercer and (...) Sleigh present to support their somewhat radical thesis is problematic in a number of respects. But rather than embracing the ‘received view’, I present further evidence in favor of the view that Leibniz had in fact adopted the pre-established harmony by 1679. (shrink)

For those interested in issues raised in P. F. Strawson’s Individuals, Brown’s book is a welcome sign. Despite the subtitle, it does not address the topic of revisionary vs. descriptive metaphysics. But it does break new ground on the question of how the historical Leibniz compares with Strawson’s by taking a careful look at the relevant texts. Strawson says he’s only calling his target “Leibniz.” Brown rightly contends that this “possible philosopher” is enough like the actual one to make Strawson’s (...) frontal assault of interest to the Leibniz scholar, and that it “does set the issues with uncommon clarity”. (shrink)

Several scholars have argued that Leibniz’s infinite analysis theory of contingency faces the Problem of Lucky Proof. This problem will be discussed here and a solution offered, trying to show that Leibniz’s proof-theory does not generate the alleged paradox. It will be stressed that only the opportunity to be proved by God, and not by us, is relevant to the issue of modality. At the heart of our proposal lies the claim that, on the one hand, Leibniz’s individual concepts are (...) saturated conceptual conjunctions, i.e., infinite conjunctions that contain either the concept itself or its privation for every primitive concept; and that, on the other hand, also certain universal concepts of states and acts are infinite conjunctions of primitive concepts and privations, even if insaturated ones. This will suffice to allow that some truths regarding individuals can’t be demonstrated, although they are included in the concept of their subject. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that Leibniz’s metaphysical commitments lead to Spinozist Necessitarianism, i.e., the view, in Spinoza’s words, that “Things could not have been produced by God in any way or in any order other than that in which they have been produced”. Leibniz comments on this passage as follows: “This proposition may be true or false, depending on how it is explained”. I suggest in this paper that what Leibniz means by this comment can be fleshed out by making (...) a distinction between what could have been actual and what is possible. I also address some potential objections to this distinction and attempt to elaborate it by means of comparing Leibniz’s and Alvin Plantinga’s approaches to modality. (shrink)

It is easy to get the impression that Newton and Leibniz do not see eye to eye on anything. Yet, as is so often the case, a closer look reveals that matters are much more complicated. Despite their disagreements, the two are frequently on the same side of central scientific and philosophical debates. This entry discusses some of the main agreements and disagreements between Newton and Leibniz, starting with their methodologies and then turning to their views on space, motion, and (...) gravitation. (shrink)

Leibniz argued that (i) substantial forms only begin to exist via Divine creation; (ii) created substances cannot transeuntly cause accidents in distinct substances; and yet (iii) created substances immanently produce their accidents. Some of Leibniz’s support for (i) came from his endorsement of a widely-made argument against the eduction of substantial forms. However, in defense of eduction, Suárez argued that if creatures cannot produce substantial forms, they also cannot produce accidents, threatening the consistency of (i) and (iii). In this paper, (...) I argue that Leibniz successfully defends the consistency of (i) and (iii) against Suárez’s argument, but at the expense of the consistency of (ii) and (iii). (shrink)

This paper argues that Śrīgupta and Leibniz accept similar metaphysical principles concerning unity, aggregates, and being. It then shows how from those shared principles, Śrīgupta and Leibniz arrive at similar conclusions concerning the reality of ordinary bodies and radically different conclusions about fundamental ontology.

Leibniz accepts causal independence, the claim that no created substance can causally interact with any other. And Leibniz needs causal independence to be true, since his well-known pre-established harmony is premised upon it. So, what is Leibniz’s argument for causal independence? Sometimes he claims that causal interaction between substances is superfluous. Sometimes he claims that it would require the transfer of accidents, and that this is impossible. But when Leibniz finds himself under sustained pressure to defend causal independence, those are (...) not the reasons that he marshals in its defense. Instead, deep into his long correspondence with Burchard de Volder, he gives a different sort of argument, one that has gone nearly unnoticed by commentators and has not yet been properly understood. In part, this is because the argument develops slowly over four years of correspondence. It emerges in early 1704, but it is formulated tersely and appears murky unless understood in light of Leibniz and De Volder’s tangled exchanges. There Leibniz argues that, on his distinctive ontology of an infinity of created substances, no two created substances could possibly causally interact, for roughly the same reasons that some Cartesians like De Volder deny interaction between minds and bodies on their substance dualist ontology. In this paper I draw out this lost argument, explain it and the metaphysics on which Leibniz builds it, and untangle Leibniz and De Volder’s exchanges concerning causation from which this argument results. (shrink)

In seinem Neuen System (1695) führt Leibniz einen bemerkenswerten Ausdruck ein, in dem sich eine neue Konzeption des Verhältnisses von Natur und Kunst manifestiert. Er wirft den Modernen, die die natürlichen Dinge ganz nach dem Muster künstlicher Maschinen verstanden haben, vor, die natürlichen und künstlichen Dinge auf unangemessene Weise vermengt zu haben. Statt den Modernen aber nun entgegenzuhalten, dass die Dinge der Natur nicht den Charakter von Maschinen haben, führt Leibniz den zunächst überraschenden Begriff der »Maschinen der Natur« ein: Auch (...) die natürlichen Körper sind demgemäß als Maschinen zu betrachten – ganz wie die Modernen nahezulegen versuchten –, jedoch sind sie Maschinen besonderer Art. Sie sind – und hierin liegt die besondere Ironie von Leibniz' Antwort auf die Modernen – in einem tiefgreifenderen, durchgreifenderen Sinne Maschine, als jene der Kunst: Sie sind Maschine durch und durch und par excellence. (shrink)

Im Alltag äußern wir nicht nur Aussagen darüber, wie die Welt tatsächlich beschaffen ist, sondern auch darüber, was notwendigerweise oder möglicherweise der Fall ist. Doch worin ist die Wahrheit solcher sogenannten Modalaussagen fundiert? Auf diese Frage gibt Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz bereits in der Frühen Neuzeit eine höchst interessante Antwort: Für ihn sind modale Wahrheiten im Intellekt Gottes fundiert. Diese Modalitätskonzeption analysiert Sebastian Bender in der vorliegenden Studie auf systematisch informierte Weise. Dabei kommt er zu folgenden Ergebnissen: Erstens vertritt Leibniz, anders (...) als häufig angenommen, eine nicht-reduktionistische Metaphysik der Modalität– Modales wird von ihm also nicht auf etwas Nicht-Modales reduziert. Zweitens ist Leibniz' Theorie der Modalität kombinatorisch geprägt. Drittens repräsentieren mögliche Welten für Leibniz nicht alles metaphysisch Mögliche. Gott kann im Prinzip auch Ansammlungen von Substanzen erschaffen, die keine Welten konstituieren. Viertens schließlich ist das für Leibniz zentrale Prinzip des zureichenden Grundes kontingent und nicht, wie häufig vorausgesetzt, notwendig. Auf diese Weise gelingt es Leibniz, seinen Rationalismus mit seinem Theismus zu verbinden. (shrink)

Leibniz describes the problem of the composition of the continuum as one of the two famous labyrinths of the human mind. The problem, in brief, is that matter and motion appear to be continuous and thus would seem to be composed of an infinity of spatial or temporal points, which is absurd. Leibniz's strategy for escaping from this labyrinth involves distinguishing the realm of the real or actual from that of the ideal. In the former, there is composition from parts (...) but no continuity: everything is discrete, even though divided to infinity. In the latter, there is genuine continuity but no composition, the whole being prior to the parts. Since the two realms are disjoint, there is... (shrink)

Leibniz argues that there must be a fundamental level of simple substances because composites borrow their reality from their constituents and not all reality can be borrowed. I contend that the underlying logic of this ‘borrowed reality argument’ has been misunderstood, particularly the rationale for the key premise that not all reality can be borrowed. Contrary to what has been suggested, the rationale turns neither on the alleged viciousness of an unending regress of reality borrowers nor on the Principle of (...) Sufficient Reason, but on the idea that composites are phenomena and thus can be real only insofar as they have a foundation in substances, from which they directly ‘borrow’ their reality. The claim that composites are phenomena rests in turn on Leibniz's conceptualism about relations. So understood, what initially looked like a disappointingly simple argument for simples turns out to be a rather rich and sophisticated one. (shrink)

This volume tells the story of the legacy and impact of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz made significant contributions to many areas, including philosophy, mathematics, political and social theory, theology, and various sciences. The essays in this volume explores the effects of Leibniz’s profound insights on subsequent generations of thinkers by tracing the ways in which his ideas have been defended and developed in the three centuries since his death. Each of the 11 essays is concerned (...) with Leibniz’s legacy and impact in a particular area, and between them they show not just the depth of Leibniz’s talents but also the extent to which he shaped the various domains to which he contributed, and in some cases continues to shape them today. With essays written by experts such as Nicholas Jolley, Pauline Phemister, and Philip Beeley, this volume is essential reading not just for students of Leibniz but also for those who wish to understand the game-changing impact made by one of history’s true universal geniuses. (shrink)

Monads, Composition, and Force: Ariadnean Threads through Leibniz’s Labyrinth, by ArthurRichard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 329.

Christia Mercer’s magnum opus, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origin and Development, long awaited, is finally about to appear from Cambridge University Press. It was well worth the wait. The book is impressive in the wealth of detailed argumentation and historical background that fills the work. Mercer’s general thesis is still that Leibniz’s mature thought emerges from a view that Leibniz shares with his teachers, an eclectic philosophy that sees truth lurking in many places, and that he sees the task of the (...) philosopher as mining the past for its truths, and showing how the different philosophies can be made consistent with one another and made into a single system. As in her earlier work, the resolution of the conflict between Aristotelianism and the new mechanism is important. But Mercer also claims to have discovered something else utterly unexpected, a strong Platonistic strain in seventeenth-century German thought. While Aristotelianism and mechanism may have dominated thought about the physical world, Mercer has discovered strongly Platonistic strains in the conception of God and the soul, both in the young Leibniz and in his teachers. Even more surprising, Mercer argues that the main tenets of Leibniz’s mature thought emerged out of this mixture, and did so as early as 1670 and 1671. In particular, she argues that both the pre-established harmony and the idealism characteristic of his mature thought emerged in these years, as the result of an attempt to harmonize different elements of Aristotelian, Platonic, and mechanist philosophies, in response to particular problems in philosophy, theology, and even physics that gripped him at that time. If she is right, this will fundamentally alter our view of Leibniz. (shrink)

Despite his fame as a philosopher, Leibniz was a diplomat by profession, and seldom managed to engage in sustained philosophical activity for any length of time. One exception to this, though, is the period towards the end of his stay in Paris and a little afterwards, when he launched a concerted attack on most of the profoundest problems in metaphysics, tackling them with a penetration and persistence that is remarkable by any standards. The resulting series of “meditations”, to use his (...) own descriptive term, penned between December of 1675 and his arrival at the court in Hanover in December of 1676, has been available for the greater part of this century only to a handful of Leibniz scholars. An edition was published in Kazan in 1913 by Ivan Jagodinsky, and it is from this source that Loemker drew to give a tantalizingly brief selection of the ‘Paris Notes’ in his well known volume of English translations. But Jagodinsky’s edition is as unreliable as it is rare, and it was not until recently that Leibniz scholars were presented with an authoritative and wholly reliable Latin edition by the German Academy of Science at Berlin, volume 3 of Series VI of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. In this volume most of the notes on metaphysics are collected together in Section F under the title De Summa Rerum, where they consitute articles 57 through 87. This fine edition, however, is of limited use for those having no Latin or German, and even for those who do, it is scarcely either convenient or affordable. (shrink)

Mates’ book has already been widely read and justly praised. It is full of clear, interesting arguments on most of the topics which engage contemporary readers of Leibniz, expertly and extensively marshalls texts, and includes a short but unusually good biography and outline of Leibniz’s system. Since I write here for an unusually well-informed and well-motivate audience, I allow myself compressed formulations of controversial arguments, antecedently acknowledging need for elaboration. I focus on a cluster of interconnected, central concerns: the nature (...) and role of nominalism, individual concepts, contingency, rational explanation, bestness and perception. (shrink)

This essay argues that, with his much-maligned “infinite analysis” theory of contingency, Leibniz is onto something deep and important – a tangle of issues that wouldn’t be sorted out properly for centuries to come, and then only by some of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. The first two sections place Leibniz’s theory in its proper historical context and draw a distinction between Leibniz’s logical and meta-logical discoveries. The third section argues that Leibniz’s logical insights initially make his “infinite (...) analysis” theory of contingency more rather than less perplexing. The last two sections argue that Leibniz’s meta-logical insights, however, point the way towards a better appreciation of (what we should regard as) his formal theory of contingency, and its correlative, his formal theory of necessity. (shrink)

El principio de sustituibilidad de los idénticos salva veritate constituye una pieza de importancia central para la teoría leibniziana de la demostración, para no hablar de sus implicancias ontológicas. Sin embargo, ha recibido la crítica de que encierra una confusión entre uso y mención. No obstante, el presente trabajo defiende la tesis de que el principio no está afectado por esa supuesta confusión, utilizando para ello la distinción leibniziana entre “la consideración del modo de concebir” y la “consideración de la (...) cosa misma”. No obstante, la introducción de dicha distinción viene aparejada con la necesidad establecer restricciones en la aplicación del mencionado principio. (shrink)

: This paper examines two features of Kant’s 1768 critique of Leibniz’ conception of space. Firstly, Leibniz’ proposed geometrical calculus called ‘analysis situs’; secondly, Leibniz’ relational conception of space. The main thesis of the paper is that Kant’s arguments are more powerful than generally recognized. With regard to the analysis situs, I will show that Kant was quite well informed about this proposed science and that his arguments severely undermine Leibniz’ claims to what it could perform. With regard to the (...) relational theory of space, Kant’s argument would require Leibniz to present a complex story about the relation between God’s act of creation and our spatial experience to defend his relational view, rather than using the simple principle of sufficient reason. (shrink)