Narrow search


By category:

By publication type:

By language:

By journals:

By document type:


Displaying: 141-160 of 189 documents

0.123 sec

141. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
Wolfgang Lenzen “Ex nihilo nihil fit”: On Leibniz’s “Principia Calculi rationalis”
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In the essay “Principia Calculi rationalis” Leibniz attempts to prove the theory of the syllogism within his own logic of concepts. This task would be quite easy if one made unrestricted use of the fundamental laws discovered by Leibniz, e.g., in the “General Inquiries” of 1686. In the essays of August 1690, Leibniz had developed some similar proofs which, however, he considered as unsatisfactory because they presupposed the unproven law of contraposition: “If concept A contains concept B, then conversely Non-B contains Non-A”. The proof in “Principia Calculi rationalis” appears to reach its goal without resorting to this law. However, it contains a subtle flaw which results from failing to postulate that the ingredient concepts have to be “possible”, i.e. self-consistent. Once this flaw is corrected, it turns out that the proof – though formally valid – would not have been approved by Leibniz because, again, it rests on an unproven principle even stronger than the law of contraposition.
142. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Wolfgang Lenzen Principia Calculi rationalis: Edition & English translation
143. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
Lucia Oliveri The Leibniz-Treuer Correspondence: (with text and English translation of excerpts from Treuer's De mente sensu non errante and Correspondence with Leibniz)
144. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
François Duchesneau A Reply to M. F. Camposampiero
145. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
Ohad Nachtomy Response to C. Noble
146. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 29
Justin E. H. Smith In Memoriam Heinrich Schepers (1925-2020)
147. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Daniel Garber Robert C. Sleigh, Jr. and Leibniz
148. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Maria Rosa Antognazza The Hypercategorematic Infinite
149. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Kyle Sereda Leibniz’s Relational Conception of Number
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In this paper, I address a topic that has been mostly neglected in Leibniz scholarship: Leibniz’s conception of number. I argue that Leibniz thinks of numbers as a certain kind of relation, and that as such, numbers have a privileged place in his metaphysical system as entities that express a certain kind of possibility. Establishing the relational view requires reconciling two seemingly inconsistent definitions of number in Leibniz’s corpus; establishing where numbers fit in Leibniz’s ontology requires confronting a challenge from the well-known nominalist reading of Leibniz most forcefully articulated in Mates (1986). While my main focus is limited to the positive integers, I also argue that Leibniz intends to subsume them under a more general conception of number.
150. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Paul Lodge True and False Mysticism in Leibniz
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The question of Leibniz’s relationship to mysticism has been a topic of some debate since the early part of the 20th Century. An initial wave of scholarship led by Jean Baruzi pre­sented Leibniz as a mystic. However, later in the 20th Century the mood turned against this view and the negative appraisal holds sway today. In this paper I do two things: First I provide a detailed account of the ways in which Leibniz is critical of mysticism; second, I argue that there is, nonetheless, an important sense in which Leibniz should be regarded as an advocate of mysticism. However, the approach that I take does not focus on an effort to overturn the kinds of considerations that led people to reject the views of Baruzi. Instead, I try to reframe the discussion and explore more complex and interesting relationships that exist between mysticism and Leibniz’s philosophical theology than have been articulated previously. Here I draw on some recent discussions of mysticism in the philosophical literature to illuminate Leibniz’s own distinction between “false mysticism” and “true mystical theology” and his assessment of the views of a number of other people who might plausibly be identified as mystics.
151. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Christina Schneider In Memoriam Hans Burkhardt (1936-2015)
152. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 25
Mogens Lærke Leibniz on the Principle of Equipollence and Spinoza’s Causal Axiom
153. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Richard T. W. Arthur Massimo Mugnai and the Study of Leibniz
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This essay is an appreciation of Massimo Mugnai’s many contributions to Leibniz scholarship, as well as to the history of logic and history of philosophy more generally.
154. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Yitzhak Melamed Reply to Colin Marshall and Martin Lin
155. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Justin E. H. Smith Reply to Sarah Tietz
156. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Mogens Lærke, CNRS (UMR 5037) Ignorantia inflat Leibniz, Huet, and the Critique of the Cartesian Spirit
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
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.
157. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Richard T. W. Arthur Leibniz’s Mechanical Principles (c. 1676): Commentary and Translation
158. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Larry M. Jorgensen By Leaps and Bounds: Leibniz on Transcreation, Motion, and the Generation of Minds
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper traces Leibniz’s use of his neologism, “transcreation.” Leibniz coins the term in his 1676 discussions of motion, using it to identify a certain type of leap that is essential to motion. But Leibniz quickly dispensed with this theory of motion, arguing instead that “nature never acts by leaps,” and the term “transcreation” fell out of use. However, Leibniz surprisingly revived the term in 1709 in his discussion of the generation of rational beings. By contrasting the way Leibniz uses the term in his theory of motion with his use of the term in the generation of rational beings, we will see that Leibniz’s arguments against leaps early in his career are less forceful against the leaps purportedly involved in the generation of minds. Nevertheless, the “transcreation” of minds does not necessary entail a discontinuity in the “chain of being.”
159. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Nicholas Rescher Leibniz and the English Language
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The only extensive study that Leibniz ever made of an English-language book, his New Essays on John Locke’s 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, was based not on the English original, but on a French translation. And his correspondence with English scholars and political figures was invariably written in Latin or French. In consequence the impression is widespread among Anglophone Leibnizians that he did not know English. However, considerable evidence has come to light in recent years that Leibniz did somehow manage to acquire a capacity to handle the language in its written form.
160. The Leibniz Review: Volume > 23
Julia Jorati Monadic Teleology without Goodness and without God
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Most interpreters think that for Leibniz, teleology is goodness-directedness. Explaining a monadic action teleologically, according to them, simply means explaining it in terms of the goodness of the state at which the agent aims. On some interpretations, the goodness at issue is always apparent goodness: an action is end-directed iff it aims at what appears good to the agent. On other interpretations, the goodness at issue is only sometimes apparent goodness and at other times merely objective goodness: some actions do not aim at what appears good to the agent, but merely at what is objectively good—that is, at what God knows to be good—and that is sufficient for teleology. My paper, on the other hand, argues that both of these interpretations are mistaken. Monadic teleology, I contend, does not have to consist in striving for the good; neither goodness nor God is required to make monadic actions teleological.