Donald Rutherford

Leibniz's well-known thesis that the actual world is just one among many possible worlds relies on the claim that some possibles are incompossible , meaning that they cannot belong to the same world. Notwithstanding its central role in Leibniz's philosophy, commentators have disagreed about how to understand the compossibility relation. We examine several influential interpretations and demonstrate their shortcomings. We then sketch a new reading, the cosmological interpretation, and argue that it accommodates two key conditions that any successful interpretation must satisfy.

Thomas Hurka has argued that Nietzsche’s positive ethical views can be formulated as a version of perfectionism that posits an objective conception of the good as the maximization of power and assigns to all agents the same goal of maximizing the perfection of the best. I show that Hurka’s case for both parts of this interpretation fails on textual grounds and that the kind of theory he proposes is in conflict with Nietzsche’s general approach to morality. The alternative reading for which I argue defends a form of perfectionism as the value perspective of a ‘noble type’ that may emerge in the wake of a revaluation of all values. The basis of this perfectionism is an individual’s projection of an ideal of life to which she ascribes intrinsic value and in terms of which the value of other things is assessed. Justifying this reading requires drawing a distinction between life-denying ideals – forms of the ‘ascetic ideal’ – and life-affirming ‘counterideals’. It also requires recognizing that the perfection of the noble type is expressed in an individual ideal that cannot be shared with others, as opposed to a common ideal of human perfection.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes work on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The core of the subject matter is philosophy and its history. But the volume’s chapters reflect the fact that philosophy in the early modern period was much broader in scope than it is currently taken to be and included a great deal of what now belongs to the natural sciences. Furthermore, philosophy in the period was closely connected with other disciplines, such as theology, law, and medicine, and with larger questions of social, political, and religious history. Volume XI includes chapters dedicated to a wide set of topics in the philosophies of René Descartes, Johann Clauberg, Louis de La Forge, Benedict Spinoza, Margaret Cavendish, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Mary Astell, and Damaris Masham.

Bien que Descartes n’emploie que rarement les mots officium ou « devoir », sa morale confère une place centrale à la notion d’action appropriée, dans un sens qui rappelle le kathekon des stoïciens. Cette notion enveloppe les devoirs de l’être humain envers Dieu et envers les autres êtres humains, ainsi que les actions qui trouvent leur justification dans le fait qu’elles favorisent la conservation et la santé du corps. Tout en relevant ces parallèles, je montre également que Descartes, dans son analyse de la vertu et des passions, s’écarte des doctrines stoïciennes ; divergence que j’explique en partie par l’acceptation de la tripartition des biens (bien moral, biens du corps, biens extérieurs) que rejettent les stoïciens.

Leibniz denies that the actual world possesses the per se unity of a substance. Instead, he seems to hold, the world is limited to the mind-dependent unity of an aggregate. Against this answer, criticized by Kant in his Inaugural Dissertation, I argue that for Leibniz the unity of the actual world is not grounded simply in God’s perception of relations among created substances but in the common dependence of those substances on a unitary cause. First, the actual world is one because every created substance is continuously dependent on God for its perfection. Without being the soul of the world, God is an emanative cause through which the created world is unified. Second, every substance is a unique “concentration” of an ideal world that is God’s model for creation. Consequently, while extensionally many, created substances are versions of the same one world chosen by God for creation.

This article discusses the final development of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s metaphysics: the theory of monads. It examines Leibniz’s arguments for monads as mindlike “simple substances,” his description of the properties of monads, and the distinction he draws among different types of monads. The remainder of the article focuses on two problems that attend Leibniz’s claim that reality ultimately consists solely of monads and their internal states (perceptions and appetitions). The first problem is whether a relation among monads can account for the supposed unity of a living body or corporeal substance; the second is whether the metaphysics of monads supports a plausible explanation of the reality of matter. With regard to the second problem, the article explores Leibniz’s thesis that monads are, in two senses, “requisites” of matter. It concludes with reflections on the limits of his attempt to explain the physical world in terms of monads alone.

This chapter discusses Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s theory of the actual world as the best of all possible worlds. The chapter opens with Leibniz’s response to the two most basic questions of metaphysics: Why is there something rather than nothing? And, why do certain things exist while other equally possible things do not? It examines Leibniz’s critique of Baruch Spinoza’s metaphysics, with particular reference to the argument that God must make a choice among possible worlds because not all possibles are “compossible.” In addition, it explores Leibniz’s claim that the best of all possible worlds is the world containing the highest level of perfection or reality, intelligibility, order, and harmony. The chapter concludes by looking at three theological doctrines underlying Leibniz’s conception of the best of all possible worlds: divine creation, conservation, and concurrence.

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.

Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy is an annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of early modern philosophy. It focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It also publishes papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.