Donald Rutherford

Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature is intended to offer a broad panorama on Leibniz’s philosophy. Although necessarily selective in its focus, it aspires to a comprehensive understanding of how the different parts of Leibniz’s philosophy — theodicy, ethics, metaphysics, natural philosophy — fit together in a coherent and compelling fashion. In the book, I indicate some of the places where tensions threaten the unity of this scheme. My primary goal, however, is to reconstruct a system that would be recognizable to Leibniz himself. Within this system, primacy is assigned to the doctrine of theodicy. Although many topics vied for Leibniz’s philosophical attention, none was more firmly embedded in his consciousness than the problem of comprehending the existence and nature of the world in a way consistent with its creation by a supremely wise and good God. One of the central theses of the book is that it is only against the background of this project that we can properly understand the details of Leibniz’s complex metaphysics.

The essay “On Generosity” holds a special place among Leibniz’s ethical writings. In no other text does Leibniz give such prominence to the concept of generosity, or relate it to his central doctrine of justice as the charity of the wise. The circumstances of the piece’s composition are uncertain. Watermark dating of the paper places it in the period 1686-1687. The Academy editors suggest a connection between it and a text by an unknown author, “Discours sur la generosité,” a transcription of which is found among Leibniz’s manuscripts. The paper on which this latter text is written is dated by watermark to the same period as “On Generosity,” and the editors plausibly speculate that Leibniz’s reading of it may have spurred the composition of his own essay on the topic.