Anatomyzing Divinity: Studies in Science, Esotericism and Political Theology (original) (raw)

PHIL 375: Advanced History of Philosophy Leibniz's Theodicy Fall 2008

Course Overview Leibniz's Theodicy-it was lampooned by Voltaire and dismissed by many others, yet it remains one of the truly distinctive philosophical responses to the problem of evil to date. Leibniz's principal work on this topic, subtitled, "Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil" (published in 1710), provides an account of how divine justice is compatible with evil in the world. In the process, Leibniz makes far-reaching metaphysical claims that transformed the philosophical landscape. In this class we will critically examine Leibniz's Theodicy. We will give some attention to the philosophical context in which Leibniz was working, but we will also raise questions about the adequacy of Leibniz's solution for today's context. We will discover that, even though there are real problems for Leibniz's position, it cannot be too quickly dismissed. Course Requirements 1. Attendance & Participation. 2. Weekly assignments (25%). 3. Two 5-8 page papers (25% each). 4. A cumulative final exam (25%), to be held on Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 3:30 pm.

Three Moral Themes of Leibniz's Spiritual Machine Between "New System" and "New Essays"

Le present est plein de l’avenir, et chargé du passé : Vorträge des XI. Internationalen Leibniz-Kongresses, 31. Juli – 4. August 2023, 2023

The advance of mechanism in science and philosophy in the 17th century created a great interest to machines or automata. Leibniz was no exception - in an early memoir Drôle de pensée he wrote admiringly about a machine that could walk on water, exhibited in Paris. The idea of automatic processing in general had a large role in his thought, as can be seen, for example, in his invention of the binary code and the so-called Calculemus!-model for solving controversies. In metaphysics, the idea of an automata was expressed most clearly in the 1695 article New System of the Nature of Substances and their Communication, and the ensuing correspondence with, among others, Foucher, Bayle, Lamy, Jaquelot and Masham. In the article Leibniz discusses the soul as a spiritual machine in the context of pre-established harmony, arguing that God can "give to a substance at the outset a nature or internal force which could produce in it an orderly way (as in spiritual or formal automaton; but a free one, in the case of a substance which is endowed with a share of reason) everything that is going to happen to it, that is to say, all the appearances or expressions it is going to have, and all without the help of any created thing." The basic idea of Leibniz's spiritual machine is that the soul or entelechy is an autonomous and spontaneous unity, consisting of internal active force and producing its own perceptions (both confused and distinct). It is a self-moving machine, driven by its perceptions and appetites, but it follows (without being conscious of it) a lawful series or programme created by God. The entelechy remains the same despite undergoing an infinite number of changes. To Foucher he explained that each state of the individual substance is a consequence of its preceding one, "as if there were only God and the substance in the world". Despite this, the spiritual machine is related not only to God, but through the pre-established harmony to bodies or natural machines. However, as it is not dependent on them, the spiritual machine is superiot to natural machines. In this paper I concentrate on three moral themes related to the spiritual machine: moral deliberation, moral identity and the goal of moral action. All these themes are more or less implicit in the New System, but are discussed in more detail in the ensuing correspondence after the publication of the article. Finally, the themes are given an extended discussion especially in the second book of New Essays on Human Understanding (1704, published 1765), written partly at the same time as some of the correspondence and unpublished related material. I will first give an overview of Leibniz's position concerning the spiritual machine or automaton in the New System and then go on to explore the three moral themes one by one, as they feature in the subsequent correspondence and in the New Essays. I will show that the three topics are essential to the function of the spiritual machine – to Sophie Charlotte Leibniz wrote: "...let us say that everything in bodies happens mechanically, or in accordance with laws of motion, and that everything in the soul happens morally, or in accordance with perceived good or evil." There are many texts that anticipate the views in the New System (notably the unpublished memoir De Affectibus of 1679) and Leibniz continued to discuss its themes later on (in addition to correpondence, for example, in Theodicy of 1710 and Monadology and Principles of Nature and Grace of 1714). Here I focus on the short-term development of Leibniz's views on the topic (around 1695-1705), but I argue that his basic view of the spiritual machine did not change much after finishing the dialogue with Locke in 1704.

ALCHEMY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEIBNIZ'S METAPHYSICS

(g.m.ross@leeds.ac.uk) Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 22, 1982, 40–45 [Digital version 2018, with original page numbers and added translations of quoted passages in square brackets] [40] The main purpose of this paper is to indicate one way in which Leibniz's metaphysics was importantly influenced by his interest in alchemy. But I shall approach this by first establishing a contrast between the case of Leibniz and that of Isaac Newton. This will occupy more than half the paper, but the contrast is a valuable one, partly because it highlights the different ways in which an interest in alchemy can co-exist with a rationalist philosophy of nature; but it is also important because it brings out a strange paradox in the recent history of the thought of the period. Newton has always been held up as a paradigm of rationality: so much so that for many people the Age of Reason is the Age of Newton. However, in recent years much has been written about aspects of Newton's thought which we now tend to regard as irrational. To be more specific, historians have researched into Newton's belief in the prisca theologia,1 the belief that man's knowledge of religious truth has been gradually diminishing since the time of Adam, but that a secret tradition has survived, hidden under symbolism and allegory in the great religious writings. Similarly, Newton believed in the prisca sapientia:2 that ancient philosophers knew more than modern ones about the secrets of nature, but concealed this knowledge in their writings. Finally, and closer to our present theme, he believed that the older mystical alchemists had a special understanding of the inner workings of nature, and consequently that a storehouse of scientific knowledge lay in wait for the man who could find the key to unlock the obscurity of their writings. It was because of this that Newton spent a large proportion of his time both studying an enormous range of alchemical literature, and also performing lengthy alchemical experiments in his own laboratory.3 Much valuable work has been done on assessing the relationship between this side of Newton's thought, and his scientific achievement. In the case of alchemy, [41] it has been shown that his mature concept of force emerged from difficulties he had in accounting for certain chemical phenomena. This development did not arise simply from his own experiments, which he conducted in a much more rational fashion than most alchemists; nor did it come simply from his own attempted explanations of chemical processes in terms of the new corpuscular philosophy; the development came from the conception of a non-1

Tercentenary Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Leibniz

2017

On 1 November 1755, the city of Lisbon in Portugal was virtually destroyed by the largest documented seismic event ever to hit Europe. At around 9.30 in the morning, the city was shaken by a violent earthquake that occurred in the Atlantic Ocean, around 100 miles southwest of Lisbon (current estimates put it at around 8.5 on the Richter scale). Around forty minutes later, the city was flooded by a tsunami, the first of three. In the areas that stayed dry there broke out numerous fires which raged for five days. The loss of life was huge-some estimates put the death toll at 10,000, others at many times that. 1 It was a catastrophe almost of Biblical proportions. As such, it invited speculation as to its theological significance, speculation that was heightened by the fact that, as the event occurred on a religious holiday (All Saint's Day), many people had died in Church, celebrating mass, while many others had died due to fires that had started on account of fallen altar candles. How did such an event fit into God's plan? How could such an event fit into God's plan? Indeed, did God even have a plan? Voltaire was one of the first to ask such questions, in his Poem on the Lisbon disaster, written just days after the event. Voltaire conceded-reluctantly one feels-that God probably did have a plan, but whatever it was, it was incomprehensible to us. This led him to train his fire not on God, but on those philosophers who had attempted to explain and justify not just this particular evil, but all the world's evils. His first target was what we would today call retributive theodicy, namely the belief that natural disasters are divine punishments distributed according to desert, which he selected on account of the oft-made suggestions that

The Optimistic Science of Leibniz

The New Atlantis, 2014

The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is chiefly remembered today, when he is remembered at all, for two reasons. First, he invented the calculus — independently, most scholars now agree, of its other inventor Newton. And second, he authored the provocative statement that this world is “the best of all possible worlds.” This claim was famously lampooned in Voltaire’s 1759 satire Candide, in which the title character, “stunned, stupefied, despairing, bleeding, trembling, said to himself: — If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others like?” Leibniz’s posthumous reputation, already marred by the accusation he had plagiarized Newton’s calculus, never recovered from Voltaire’s mockery. Yet Leibniz is one of the most impressive figures in the history of modern science, mathematics, and philosophy. It seems impossible that one individual could accomplish all that he did. The diversity of Leibniz’s interests and undertakings is dizzying. How are we to make sense of a man who contributed prominently to so many fields, including both religion and science? In our day, it is common to think especially of religion and science as either pulling in opposing directions in their respective understandings of the world, or as parallel but different domains. How did they hang together for Leibniz?

Tercentenary Essays in the Philosophy and Science of Leibniz

2017

This book presents new research into key areas of the work of German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Reflecting various aspects of Leibniz’s thought, this book offers a collection of original research arranged into four separate themes: Science, Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Religion and Theology. With in-depth articles by experts such as Maria Rosa Antognazza, Nicholas Jolley, Agustín Echavarría, Richard Arthur and Paul Lodge, this book is an invaluable resource not only for readers just beginning to discover Leibniz, but also for scholars long familiar with his philosophy and eager to gain new perspectives on his work.