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14Leibniz’s Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice, 1703-2003The Leibniz Review 13 67-81. 2003.Leibniz’s Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice is his most important writing on justice as “wise charity” and “universal benevolence” ; we now observe the 300th anniversary of its composition, and a reproduction of part of Leibniz’s manuscript appears in the Appendix to this article. But Leibniz’s essay might with equal justice be called, “Meditation on the Common Notion of Platonism”—for the Méditation opens with a nearly-verbatim paraphrase of Euthyphro 9e-10e, moves on to reduce Hob…Read more
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22A Preface to an Unpublished MS by Michael Oakeshott on Hobbes's LeviathanPolitical Theory 29 (6): 833-833. 2001.
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5Rousseau's Political Philosophy: An Interpretation From WithinPhilosophical Review 87 (2): 291. 1978.
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46Leibniz's Scottish Connection: The Correspondence with Thomas Burnett of KemneyJournal of Scottish Philosophy 1 (1): 69-85. 2003.
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32Leibniz’ “Monadologie” 1714-2014The Leibniz Review 24 1-27. 2014.It is well-known that Leibniz ends and crowns the 1714 “Monadologie” with a version of his notion of jurisprudence universelle or “justice as the charity [love] of the wise:” for sections 83-90 of the Vienna manuscript claim that “the totality of all spirits must compose the City of God . . . this perfect government . . . the most perfect state that is possible . . . this truly universal monarchy [which is] a moral world in the natural world”—a moral world of iustitia in which “no good action wo…Read more
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29How Coherent is the Social Contract Tradition?Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (4): 543. 1973.
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4Three. The Departure from General Will: Malebranche on Moral Relations, Order, and OccasionalismIn The General Will before Rousseau. The transformation of the Divine into the Civic, Presses Universitaires De France. pp. 99-137. 1987.
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7Malebranche's Moral Philosophy: Divine and Human Justice.'In Steven M. Nadler (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche, Cambridge University Press. pp. 220--61. 2000.
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28Leibniz’ Méditation sur la notion commune de la justiceThe Leibniz Review 15 185-216. 2005.To mark the 300th anniversary of the composition of Leibniz’ most important mature writing on justice, the Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice, I published an interpretation of this work in The Leibniz Review. But Dr. Andreas Blank, dissatisfied with my Platonizing “reading” of the Méditation, published his own commentary in the same Review —treating not just my 2003 article but also my Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise and several smaller writings f…Read more
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4Leibniz’ Mediterranean Ethics: The Graeco-Roman Foundations of Iustitia Caritas SapientisStudia Leibnitiana 43 (1): 5-23. 2011.
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Harvard UniversityRegular Faculty
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Interest
17th/18th Century Philosophy |