•  497
  •  75
    Why Shouldn’t Leibniz Have Studied Spinoza?
    The Leibniz Review 17 107-138. 2007.
    In light of the growing interest in the relation between Leibniz and Spinoza in recent years, I would like to draw attention to earlier discussions of this topic in Germany and France during the 19th century. Stein and Erdmann argued that Spinoza had an impact on Leibniz. According to their critics Guhrauer, Trendelenburg and Gerhardt in Germany, as well as Foucher de Careil in France, Leibniz studied Spinoza only after the main points of his system were already developed. I will show that the w…Read more
  •  56
    This paper intends to show the connection between the theological, logical and epistemological ideas in Leibniz’s thinking. The paper will focus on the reasons for Leibniz’s fundamental decision to defend the Christian mysteries and his three different strategies for doing so. Each of these strategies is an answer to a particular challenge: to the Socinian who claims that the mysteries are contradictory; to the mechanical philosophy which denies the possibility of the mysteries, and to Spinoza’s…Read more
  •  54
    Why Shouldn’t Leibniz Have Studied Spinoza?
    The Leibniz Review 17 107-138. 2007.
    In light of the growing interest in the relation between Leibniz and Spinoza in recent years, I would like to draw attention to earlier discussions of this topic in Germany and France during the 19th century. Stein and Erdmann argued that Spinoza had an impact on Leibniz. According to their critics Guhrauer, Trendelenburg and Gerhardt in Germany, as well as Foucher de Careil in France, Leibniz studied Spinoza only after the main points of his system were already developed. I will show that the w…Read more
  •  33
    Die lebensgeschichte spinozas (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (1). 2008.
    When Jakob Freudenthal published Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas in 1899, it was the first collection of biographical documents on Spinoza, who was then still seen as something of an ascetic and isolated philosopher. This view had been suggested by Jarig Jelles’ preface to Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. Bayle had also used Spinoza’s unique vita when arguing for his claim that an atheist could live a virtuous life. While this had offered a pretext for reading Spinoza since the end of the seventeenth cen…Read more
  •  29
    Doing without Free Will: Spinoza and Contemporary Moral Problems introduces Spinoza into the current discussion of the possibility of morality without free will, as it was he who first accomplished such a task. While his contemporaries reacted with shock to his determinist philosophy, today more people are ready to take seriously Spinoza's moral philosophy, which provides a foundation for our understanding of responsibility, akrasia, and moral values without the need for free will.
  •  22
    Sovereignty and Obedience
    In Desmond M. Clarke & Catherine Wilson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, Oxford University Press. 2011.
    This article examines the treatment of the concepts of sovereignty and obedience in early modern Europe. It explores the conflicting conceptions of the people's right of resistance to the king as they developed in the political upheavals following the Reformation. It describes Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza's more differentiated and coherent concept of sovereignty and their discussion of civil rights. It also discusses the understanding of sovereignty and obedience that was developed by Samuel…Read more
  •  21
    The Gift of Science (review)
    New Nietzsche Studies 8 (1-2): 197-202. 2009.
  •  20
    Leibniz's Naturalized Philosophy of Mind by Larry M. Jorgensen
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (4): 684-686. 2021.
    Larry Jorgensen aims to show that "Leibniz offers a fully natural theory of mind", recommending Leibniz to our contemporary discussion of naturalism. Readers of Leibniz will, however, hesitate to call him a naturalist. After all, he considered natural laws to be subordinated rules below general divine laws and rejected explaining the soul's action by bodily motion. Jorgensen does have a point, though, when he refers to Leibniz's frequent pleas for natural explanations and his continuity principl…Read more
  •  18
    Urban Gottfried Bucher is one of the most surprising authors in early German enlightenment and has been rightly celebrated as a materialist and therefore radical thinker. But he did not teach the same kind of materialism as his contemporary Andreas Rüdiger who leaned toward Locke’s empiricism. Bucher is much closer to Hobbes’ mechanical materialism, to Spinoza’s criticism of free will, and to Tschirnhaus’ extending of the mathematical method to natural science. His explanation of the working of …Read more
  •  18
    The many equivocations that, in several respects, characterised the reception of Leibniz's Principes de la Nature et de la Grâce and Monadologie, up until the last century, find their origins in the genetic circumstances of their manuscripts, which gave rise to misinformation published in an anonymous review that appeared in the Leipzig Acta eruditorum in 1721. Archival research demonstrates that the author of this review, as well as of the Latin review of the Monadologie, which appeared, the sa…Read more
  •  17
  •  16
    Introduction
    In Douglas Jesseph & Ursula Goldenbaum (eds.), Infinitesimal Differences: Controversies Between Leibniz and His Contemporaries, Walter De Gruyter. 2008.
  •  15
    Nach einer umfangreichen theoretischen Einführung wird auf der Grundlage von sieben Fallstudien die Funktion der öffentlichen Debatte für die Entstehung bürgerlicher Öffentlichkeit und Aufklärung im protestantischen Raum des Alten Reiches analysiert. Die Untersuchung bietet zugleich einen methodischen Zugriff zur Erforschung der Geschichte von Ideen, der sowohl den Vereinseitigungen der traditionellen Ideengeschichte als auch der sozial- und mentalitätsgeschichtlichen Forschung entgehen will. Im…Read more
  •  13
    Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 47 (1): 141-142. 2009.
    When Jakob Freudenthal published Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas in 1899, it was the first collection of biographical documents on Spinoza, who was then still seen as something of an ascetic and isolated philosopher. This view had been suggested by Jarig Jelles’ preface to Spinoza’s Opera posthuma. Bayle had also used Spinoza’s unique vita when arguing for his claim that an atheist could live a virtuous life. While this had offered a pretext for reading Spinoza since the end of the seventeenth cen…Read more
  •  12
    Thomas Hobbes' Revolution des Naturrechts
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 36 (5): 411. 1988.
  •  11
    "The development of the calculus during the 17th century was successful in mathematical practice, but raised questions about the nature of infinitesimals: were they real or rather fictitious? This collection of essays, by scholars from Canada, the US, Germany, United Kingdom and Switzerland, gives a comprehensive study of the controversies over the nature and status of the infinitesimal. Aside from Leibniz, the scholars considered are Hobbes, Wallis, Newton, Bernoulli, Hermann, and Nieuwentijt. …Read more
  •  11
    Freiheit und Notwendigkeit
    with Peter Heyl
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 41 (1): 148-151. 1993.
  •  8
    Von der Angst des Erkennens Zum 200. Todestag Moses Mendelssohns
    Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 34 (1): 42. 1986.