Nikolaos Loukidelis and Christopher Brinkmann 3 Leibnizian Ideas in Nietzsche's Philosophy: On Force, Monads, Perspectivism, and the Subject (original) (raw)

LEIBNIZ AND THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY CONTROVERSY OVER SUBSTANCE MONISM

In some remarks from his later years, Leibniz connects Averroes's views on a unique active intellect with Spinoza's substance monism. The present article discusses the question of whether Averroes's notion of a unique active intellect could be understood as one of the sources of Leibniz's early substance monism. It will be argued that the early Leibniz was familiar with a variety of diverging interpretations of Averroes. Some of these ascribe individuation to a plurality of substantial forms and analyze the dependence of human intellectual activities on the active intellect in terms of 'assisting' causation. Other interpretations do imply versions of substance monism, either with respect to human minds or generally with respect to natural particulars. However, these versions of substance monism are compatible with versions of substance pluralism, either because a plurality of animal minds with activities of their own is acknowledged or because the notion of substance is regarded as an equivocal concept, corresponding to the different degrees in which created beings participate in the divine being. Considering the possible impact of these diverging interpretations on the early Leibniz will point towards the relevance of distinguishing the notions of substance as active being and of substance as independent being.

Sensation and Resistance: Leibniz on Passivity and Confused Perception

»Le present est plein de l’avenir, et chargé du passé«: Vorträge des XI. Internationalen Leibniz- Kongresses, Band 2, pp. 167-179, 2023

The relationship between Leibniz's dynamical account of individual substances and the perceptual nature that he attributes to them is one of the major problematic aspects of his mature philosophy. Leibniz presents the connection between his notion of force and the perceptions and appetitions of substances as one of the key points of his 1695 Système Nouveau and of the new notion of substance there presented 2 , but this same association is already present in various texts from the 1680s. In the conclusion of De Modo Distinguendi Phaenomena Realia ab Imaginariis (1683-86), he famously states: Concerning bodies [...] if anything is real, it is solely the force of acting and suffering [vim agendi et patiendi], and hence that the substance of a body consists in this (as if in matter and form). Those bodies, however, which have no substantial form, are merely phenomena or at least only aggregates of the true ones. Substances have metaphysical matter or passive power insofar as they express something confusedly; active, insofar as they express it distinctly.

Mercer, Leibniz's Metaphysics-it's origins and development

Leibniz's Metaphysics, 2002

This is the first systematic study of the development of Leibniz’s philosophy. By placing his vast writings in their proper intellectual context and by analyzing unnoticed early works, Christia Mercer shows that Leibniz developed his philosophy much earlier than previously believed and for reasons that have not been recognized. By excavating Leibniz’s original views about substance, God, and method, Mercer exposes for the first time the underlying assumptions and ultimate goals of his philosophy. It becomes clear that Leibniz’s relation to Descartes, Spinoza, and other major seventeenth-century thinkers is different than previously thought. Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development offers a major reassessment of Leibniz’s thought. It compels scholars to reconsider many of their assumptions about early modern science, theology, and philosophy. Christia Mercer is the Gustave M. Berne Professor, Philosophy Department, Columbia University. “This is without doubt one of the most important contributions to Leibniz’s scholarship in decades. Anyone interested in Leibniz’s metaphysics will come away from this book understanding his early and mature thought far better than they did beforehand. Leibniz’s Metaphysics is immensely learned and helpfully structured, especially in its willingness to lay out the bare bones of Leibniz’s thinking in terms of a set of clearly articulated principles and to use helpful analogy and metaphor as a way into this intellectual world… [T]he merits of this book are striking.” John Hawthorne, Times Literary Supplement

Leibniz on substance in the Discourse on Metaphysics

"Locke and Leibniz on substance", edited by T. Stoneham and P. Lodge, Routledge. , 2015

In the Discourse on Metaphysics Leibniz put forward his famous complete-concept definition of substance. Sometimes this definition is glossed as stating that a substance is an entity with a concept so complete that it contains all its predicates, and it is thought that it follows directly from Leibniz’s theory of truth. Now, an adequate definition of substance should not apply to accidents. But, as I shall point out, if Leibniz’s theory of truth is correct then an accident is an entity with a concept so complete that it contains all its predicates. The aim of this paper is to clarify Leibniz’s notion of substance in the Discourse with a view to explaining how that definition successfully distinguishes between substances and accidents.

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.

Chemistry and dynamics in the thought of G.W. Leibniz I

Foundations of Chemistry, 2020

Chemistry and dynamics are closely related in G.W. Leibniz's thinking, from the corpuscularism of his youth to the theory of conspiracy movements that he proposes in his later years. Despite the importance of chemistry and chemical thought in Leibniz's philosophy, interpreters have not paid enough attention to this subject, especially in the recent decades. This work aims to contribute to filling this gap in Leibnizian studies. In this first part of the work I will expose the theory of matter that the young Leibniz conceives under the influence of chemical corpuscularism. Leibniz uses R. Boyle's interpretation of the Aristotelian idea of form in order to give an explanation of the unity and cohesion of bodies. As opposed to the Cartesians, Leibniz puts forth the idea of a dependence between the variables of extension, movement and figure, without losing analytical clarity and with the aim of extending the explanatory power of physics to natural phenomena difficult to approach by Cartesian mechanics.