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818Leibniz and the Substance of the Vinculum SubstantialeJournal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2): 203-220. 2000.This paper analyzes Leibniz's notorious 'vinculum substantiale', or 'substantial bond', as it appears in his correspondence with the Jesuit philosopher and theologian, Bartholomew Des Bosses. It is shown that, while Leibniz employs the vinculum to address a problem relating to the unity of corporeal substance, it ultimately violates other key principles in his philosophy.
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790Existence, Essence, et Expression: Leibniz sur 'toutes les absurdités du Dieu de Spinoza'In Pierre-Francois Moreau, Mogens Laerke & Raphaële Andrault (eds.), Spinoza et Leibniz: Rencontres, controverse, réceptions, Presses De L'université Paris-sorbonne. pp. 57-82. 2014.That Leibniz finds the philosophy of Spinoza horrifyingly wrong is obvious to anyone who reads Leibniz’s work; that Leibniz finds Spinozism so seductive that his own system is in danger of collapsing into it is less obvious but, I believe, equally true. The difference here is not so much between an exoteric and an esoteric philosophy suggested by Russell2 but between a thorough-going rationalism on the part of Spinoza and Leibniz’s “mitigated rationalism” – mitigated by the exigencies of his ort…Read more
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666Grounding the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Leibnizian Rationalism versus the Humean ChallengeIn Carlos Fraenkel, Dario Perinetti & Justin Smith (eds.), The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Revolution, Springer. pp. 201--219. 2011.This essay examines arguments offered in support of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) by Leibniz and his followers as well as Hume's critique of the PSR. It is shown that Leibniz has a defensible argument for the PSR, whereas the arguments of his self-proclaimed followers are weak. Thus, Hume's challenge is met by Leibniz, by Wolff and Baumgarten not so much.
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388Kant’s ThinkerJournal of the History of Philosophy 49 (4): 502-503. 2011.Kant’s Thinker is an excellent and important addition to the literature. In it, Patricia Kitcher aims at arriving at a comprehensive understanding of Kant’s theory of the cognitive subject. To this end, she analyzes a central component of the most notoriously difficult part of the Critique of Pure Reason, the theory of the unity of apperception in the chapter on the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. In Kitcher’s view, the ultimate payoff of such a study is that Kant’s theory can “provi…Read more
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280“Becoming who one is” in Spinoza and NietzscheIyyun 50 327-38. 2001.The connection between Spinoza and Nietzsche has often been remarked upon in the literature on the two thinkers.1 Not surprisingly, Nietzsche himself first noticed the similarity between his (earlier) thought and the thought of Spinoza, remarking to Overbeck in an oft-quoted postcard, “I have a precursor, and what a precursor!” He goes on to say, “Not only is his over-all tendency like mine – making knowledge the most powerful affect – but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; …Read more
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255Leibniz and the Shelf of EssenceThe Leibniz Review 15 27-47. 2005.This paper addresses D. C. Williams’s question, “How can Leibniz know that he is a member of the actual world and not merely a possible monad on the shelf of essence?” A variety of answers are considered. Ultimately, it is argued that no particular perception of a state of affairs in the world can warrant knowledge of one’s actuality, nor can the awareness of any property within oneself; rather, it is the nature of experience itself, with the flow of perceptions, that guarantees our actuality. A…Read more
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212Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnizStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was one of the great thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is known as the last “universal genius”. He made deep and important contributions to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history. Even the eighteenth century French atheist and materialist Denis Diderot, whose views could not have stood in greater opposition to those of Leibniz, could n…Read more
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202Leibniz’s Metaphysics and Metametaphysics: Idealism, Realism, and the Nature of SubstancePhilosophy Compass 5 (11): 871-879. 2010.According to the standard view of his metaphysics, Leibniz endorses idealism: the thesis that the world is made up solely of minds or monads and their perceptual and appetitive states. Recently,this view has been challenged by some scholars, who argue that Leibniz can be seen as admitting corporeal substances, that is, animals or embodied souls, into his ontology, and that, therefore, it is false to attribute a strict idealism to him. Subtler accounts suggest that Leibniz begins his philosophica…Read more
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198Perfection, power and the passions in Spinoza and LeibnizRevue Roumaine de la Philosophie 51 (1-2): 21-38. 2007.In a short piece written most likely in the 1690s and given the title by Loemker of “On Wisdom,” Leibniz says the following: “...we see that happiness, pleasure, love, perfection, being, power, freedom, harmony, order, and beauty are all tied to each other, a truth which is rightly perceived by few.”1 Why is this? That is, why or how are these concepts tied to each other? And, why have so few understood this relation? Historians of philosophy are familiar with the fact that both Spinoza and Leib…Read more
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193Leibniz and Locke on natural kindsIn Vlad Alexandrescu (ed.), Branching Off: The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, Zeta Books. 2009.One of the more interesting topics debated by Leibniz and Locke and one that has received comparatively little critical commentary is the nature of essences and the classification of the natural world.1 This topic, moreover, is of tremendous importance, occupying a position at the intersection of the metaphysics of individual beings, modality, epistemology, and philosophy of language. And, while it goes back to Plato, who wondered if we could cut nature at its joints, as Nicholas Jolley has poin…Read more
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172On an Unpublished Manuscript of Leibniz *: New Light on the Vinculum Substantiale and the Correspondence with Des BossesThe Leibniz Review 8 69-79. 1998.Notiones sunt Entium, aut Respectuum. Entia sunt Res aut Modi. Res sunt substantiae aut phaenomenae. Substantiae sunt vel simplices vel compositae. Substantia simplex est Monas; Monas autem est vel primitiva Deus, a quo omnia; vel derivativa. Et ha[e]c vel perceptiva tantum, vel etiam sensitiva; et haec vel sensitiva tantum vel etiam intellectiva quae et spiritus appellatur. Rursus Monas vel est Anima corporis vel est separata; haec vel creata (ut plerique volunt etsi ego an creata sint monades …Read more
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170On an Unpublished Manuscript of Leibniz *: New Light on the Vinculum Substantiale and the Correspondence with Des BossesThe Leibniz Review 8 69-79. 1998.
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169Leibniz's modal metaphysicsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.In the main article on Leibniz, it was claimed that Leibniz's philosophy can be seen as a reaction to the Cartesian theory of corporeal substance and the necessitarianism of Spinoza and Hobbes. This entry will address this second aspect of his philosophy. In the course of his writings, Leibniz developed an approach to questions of modality—necessity, possibility, contingency—that not only served an important function within his general metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical theology but al…Read more
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146On monadic domination in Leibniz’s metaphysicsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 10 (3). 2002.I shall proceed in the following way. In parts II and III of this paper, I shall discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the interpretation put forward by Robert Merrihew Adams in his recent book, and I shall expand upon this account, discussing a crucial but hitherto unexamined aspect of the relation between dominant and subordinate monads, reconstructed from Leibniz's letters to Des Bosses and his essays of 1714, _Principles of Nature and Grace and Monadology. In part IV of this paper, I shall…Read more
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138Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (review) (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 40 (3): 399-400. 2002.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.3 (2002) 399-400 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 Jonathan I. Israel. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. xx + 810. Cloth, $45.00. Jonathan Israel's goal in this excellent book is to show that we cannot fully understand the high Enlightenme…Read more
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127Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s MeditationsJournal of the History of Philosophy 48 (1). 2009.In his Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations, John Carriero presents a sustained and sensitive interpretation of this seminal work of modern philosophy. The two worlds of the title are the worlds of Scholastic philosophy on the one side, and of the mechanical philosophy on the other, and it is Carriero’s argument that the Meditations are most helpfully understood against the background of Thomistic Scholasticism. In particular, Carriero shows that there is a deep difference be…Read more
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125Descartes on Causation – Tad SchmaltzPhilosophical Quarterly 60 (239): 418-420. 2010.No Abstract
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119Marks and traces: Leibnizian scholarship past, present, and futurePerspectives on Science 10 (1): 123-146. 2002.
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118Leibniz and Adam (review)The Leibniz Review 5 29-32. 1995.The book under review contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference “Leibniz and Adam,” held in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem from December 29, 1991 to January 2, 1992. The object of the conference and the book was to consider the role of Adam, the first man, in Leibniz’s thought and, in doing so, “to provide an unusual view of the interrelations between his metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of language, theory of knowledge, logic, attidude vis-à-vis mysticism, philosophy…Read more
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115Towards Non‐Being: The Logic and Metaphysics of Intentionality ‐ By Graham Priest (review)Philosophical Books 48 (1): 83-84. 2007.
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113Some remarks on the ontological arguments of Leibniz and GödelIn Herbert Breger (ed.), Einheit in der Vielheit: Akten des VIII. Leibniz Kongresses, Hartmann. pp. 510-517. 2006.Beschäftigung mit der Philosophie, selbst wenn keine positiven Ergebnisse herauskommen (sondern ich ratlos bleibe), ist auf jeden Fall wohltätig. Es hat die Wirkung (dass „die Farbe heller“), d.h., dass die Realität deutlicher als solche erscheint. – Kurt Gödel..
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107From the Metaphysical Union of Mind and Body to the Real Union of Monads: Leibniz on Supposita and Vincula SubstantialiaSouthern Journal of Philosophy 36 (4): 505-529. 2010.
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103Cover, J. A., and John O'Leary-Hawthorne. Substance and Individuation in Leibniz (review)Review of Metaphysics 55 (4): 849-850. 2002.
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103Ariew, Roger. Descartes and the Last Scholastics (review)Review of Metaphysics 54 (1): 128-129. 2000.
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100Keller, Pierre. Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness (review)Review of Metaphysics 54 (2): 446-447. 2000.
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100Review: Westphal, Kant's Transcendental Proof of RealismJournal of the History of Philosophy 44 (4): 665-666. 2006.Brandon Look - Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:4 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.4 665-666 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Brandon C. Look University of Kentucky Kenneth R. Westphal. Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 299. Cloth, $80.00. Westphal's book is a rich and exciting contribution to the field of Kant studies. Its claims run counter to much contemporary…Read more
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96Idealism and Corporeal Substance in Leibniz's MetaphysicsIn Stewart Duncan & Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, Routledge. pp. 132. 2013.
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96Individuation und Einzelnsein: Nietzsche, Leibniz, Aristoteles (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 43 (1): 121-122. 2005.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Individuation und Einzelnsein: Nietzsche, Leibniz, AristotelesBrandon C. LookPaola-Ludovika Coriando. Individuation und Einzelnsein: Nietzsche, Leibniz, Aristoteles. Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2003. Pp. ix. + 318. €28,00.What is a singular thing? Is there a first or last principle that allows us to call something an individual or one? What is the relation between the particular and the universal? Does the being of a particul…Read more
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